trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[Cryonics News] Australian cryonics startup: Stasis Systems Australia update
by Maelin — 2012-06-15T05:08:09.954Z

Potentially of interest to my fellow antipodean LessWrongers. Stasis Systems Australia is a company seeking to start a cryonics facility in Australia. Their website is pretty sparse, but they just sent out a mailing list update on how they are going, and it doesn't appear that the information therein is located in any news section of the website, so I thought I'd post it here.

Hello,

We at Stasis Systems Australia Ltd are happy to report our plans to build a cryonics facility in Australia are progressing well.

You may remember contacting us or attending our online meeting last year, but here's a quick reminder of what we're doing.

We are a group of Australasian cryonicists putting together a non-for-profit organisation to build and run the first cryonic storage facility in the southern hemisphere.

We're proud to have WA-based Marta Sandberg on the board of directors as an advisor, as she has a wealth of knowledge and experience from her ongoing role as a director of the well-established Cryonics Institute.

We are now officially incorporated as a not-for-profit company, and one investor away from the magic number of ten that will trigger the next stage of the project - selecting a piece of land and starting construction!

We have had productive discussions with the NSW Department of Health, and are developing positive relationships with the Cryonics Institute, Alcor, and KrioRus.

We think what we’re doing is worthwhile and in the long term will be of great benefit to the Australasian community. If you’d like to get involved either as an investor or a volunteer, that would be fantastic. We’d love help with articles for the website, search engine optimisation, web graphics, or any other skill you have that we might need.

We would especially appreciate you passing this update on to anyone you know who might be interested.

Best regards,

The Stasis Systems Australia team

www.StasisSystemsAustralia.com

Follow @StaSysAus on Twitter

Like StaSysAus on Facebook
What's the best way to rest?
by  — 2012-06-15T00:45:13.765Z

So, it's well-known (or, at least, oft-thought) that you can't just work 16 hours a day; if you want to get stuff done, you need to rest from time to time. You have to take breaks.

Today, just now, I realized that I don't really know what the best way to rest is. If I want to rest, should I do something that's fun and interesting, like reading a fantasy novel? Should I do something that's boring, like building roads in Minecraft, so that work will seem comparatively interesting when I get back? (And besides, reading a fantasy novel is a bit of a challenge, at least for me, whereas building roads in Minecraft is trivial.) Physical activity probably helps, but how much? Do relaxing activities, like taking a warm shower, help more than just sitting there? How can I tell when it's time to take a break? How can I tell when it's time to get back to work?

(Suggestions for tags would be appreciated.)
How confident is your atheism?
by r_claypool — 2012-06-14T20:18:33.257Z

A friend recently asked how strongly I believe that my deconversion from Christianity was not a mistake. Here's my response, and for those of you who are not Christians, I'm just wondering what numbers you would give:

"There is a part of me that wants to say the chance is far less than 1 percent. But when I consider what 1% must mean about my ability to follow complex arguments and base my judgement on the right premises, it seems absurd to say that.

Trying to honestly estimate the chance that I'm wrong about the Bible being generally reliable is a fascinating exercise... I know the number is low, but I'm not sure how low.

Today I would give myself a 1 in 20 chance of being wrong. If I were to consider the arguments of 20 other groups similar to Christian theologians, I would probably misunderstand them at least 1 time in 20. After talking with 20 groups that have a very different worldview, I might think they are all are mistaken, but once in a while, maybe 5% of the time, it would actually be me.

Wow, 5%!?! If I convert that into "There is a 5% probability that the God of the Bible exists and will send me to hell", I feel scared. But I know how to cheer myself up: I just say, "No way, the chance I'll end up in hell MUST be less than 5%. After all, the God of the Bible is CLEARLY just a big, mean alpha-monkey and... [rehearse all the atheistic arguments here]".

This back-and-forth from certainty to uncertainty makes me feel like I'm doing something seriously wrong.

So what about you? What chance do you place on some variant of Christianity turning up to be true, and what chance do you think a god of some sort exists?"

Numbers please.
Brainstorming help request: teaching rationality basics in an RPG setting
by MarkusRamikin — 2012-06-14T19:05:58.951Z

EDIT: Minor updates happened.

I'd like to ask you all for thoughts on a certain idea I'm toying with. Especially any of you who are familiar with the Wheel of Time fantasy series by Robert Jordan.
I play a MUD (multi-user dungeon, basically a text-based MMORPG), based on that series. One of my characters is a member of the White Tower, which is basically a mage organisation/school, and as part of our roleplay activities we sometimes hold classes (example, long, probably not worth your time) for lower rank members. These typically last an hour or two and sometimes get used to convey interesting real life knowledge. For instance there has been a class on mnemonic techniques.
I see an opportunity to spread rationality a little. One of the Ajah (subdivisions) of the Tower is specifically concerned with pursuing truth, logic etc. which means if I joined it, I would have no trouble teaching a class or two with some material from the Sequences. I wonder if any of us here have done things like that in the past?
What sort of essentials would you pack into a class or at most a few classes 1-2 hours each (not just me reading stuff out but including a discussion), for people without technical backgrounds? Conducted at typing speed, so basically imagine you're going to spend two hours talking to 3-6 people about rationality on IRC chat or some such setting.
Also, should I involve or steer away from the metaphysics of the Wheel of Time setting (the Creator/Dark One, the Pattern etc)?
My ideas so far:
Part 1: "Cognitive biases, or why you, yes you, are an idiot".
- which ones would be most interesting/simple/useful to teach about?
- Obviously i need to start with how knowing about biases can hurt you...
- Confirmation bias: I might try the 2-4-6 game, though it'll be a bit of a mess in a group setting.
- what other biases and examples would you use?

Part 2: Truth and evidence
- truth, map/territory
- what is evidence
- rational evidence vs other kinds of evidence
- what is not evidence (instead of UFO cults I'd speak of False Dragon followers)

A question I anticipate coming up: Is there rational evidence for the Creator/Dark One/the Pattern? Ideas for handling this needed.
Note: I am NOT aiming at atheism at all costs, like a Force Skeptic approach. It's neither very rational if we're in WoT, nor practical for my character. In fact I intend to not talk about religion if possib...
Organic food, conventional food
by NancyLebovitz — 2012-06-14T15:25:13.736Z

I've been wondering whether there's any solid evidence that organic food is healthier than conventionally produced food-- the arguments I've seen on the subject have been theoretical/aesthetic.

I'm interested in anything in the range from personal stories to scientific studies, but would prefer to avoid extremely general arguments or claims that people who prefer one or the other are demonstrating character defects.

Edited to add: Thanks for the replies. I'm hoping for experiments which test the effects of food produced in various ways on organisms, especially multi-cellular organisms. It was interesting to find out that plants which have to fight off insects for themselves have more mutagens.

The mutation experiment is very cute, but it leaves out the possibility of damage that isn't related to mutation-- for example, hormonal effects. Also, if it's done on a standard bacteria acquiring the ability to make a particular nutrient, this might not be a test for mutation in general.

I realize experiments on organic vs. conventional would be difficult, especially if you're tracking human health. It would be very hard to avoid confounding factors like other lifestyle factors and income.

"Conventional food" is actually a large blob of a concept-- different pesticides, fertilizers, etc. are used on different foods at different times, so finding out what people are actually exposed to would be difficult.
Meetup : Helsinki Meetup
by Kaj_Sotala — 2012-06-14T13:00:32.607Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup

WHEN:
21 June 2012 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Café Vanha, Mannerheimintie 3, Helsinki, Finland

User:TCB is visiting Helsinki in June. Since it's nice to have various LWers get to know each other, there will be a meetup at Vanhan Kuppila / Café Vanha with her as the special guest star. If we get tired of just hanging out and talking about random stuff, we can try something fun from the Meetup Booklet. Kaj will bring Zendo equipment.

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup
AGI Impacts conference in Oxford in December, with Call for Papers
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2012-06-14T11:37:21.652Z

From the 8th to the 12th of December, the Future of Humanity Institute will be hosting the Winter Intelligence Multi-Conference, a dual conference including AGI-12 (the Fifth Conference on Artificial General Intelligence), followed by the AGI impacts conference. Of great relevance to the people on Less Wrong, the impacts conference will about the safety, risks and impacts of AGI, and how best to prepare now for these challenges.

The conference now has a Call for Papers, with an associated prize offered by the Singularity Institute. Please publicise on any relevant places:

'IMPACTS AND RISKS OF ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE'

AGI Impacts, 10-11.12.2012, OXFORD

The first conference on the Impacts and Risks of Artificial General Intelligence will take place at the University of Oxford, St. Anne’s College, on December 10th and 11th, 2012 – immediately following the fifth annual conference on Artificial General Intelligence AGI-12. AGI-Impacts is organized by the “Future of Humanity Institute” (FHI) at Oxford University through its “Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology”. The two events form the Winter Intelligence Multi-Conference 2012, hosted by FHI.

The conference will explore questions such as: How can we best predict the impact of future intelligent and superintelligent machines? How can we combine ideas from computer science, mathematics and philosophy to best estimate this impact? What will be the impacts of AGI on the world? Which directions of research should be most explored, and which should be de-emphasized or avoided? What can we do to best ensure scientific rigour in this non-experimental academic field? What are the best ideas and methods for ensuring both safety and predictability of advanced AI systems? Can we lay the foundations to a field of rigorous study of realistic AGI control methods that lead to implementable security protocols?

The scope is wide, but all papers are expected to be of high quality and with the maximal amount of rigour that is possible for the subject area.

SUBMISSION – PUBLICATION - PRIZE

Please submit your paper to our easychair conference website. Submit an abstract of ca. 400-800 words, with author contact information by August 31st, 2012. A selection of papers from AGI-Impacts 2012 will be published in a special volume ...
Wanted: "The AIs will need humans" arguments
by Kaj_Sotala — 2012-06-14T11:01:21.335Z

As Luke mentioned, I am in the process of writing "Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk": A journal-bound summary of the AI risk problem, and a taxonomy of the societal proposals (e.g. denial of the risk, no action, legal and economic controls, differential technological development) and AI design proposals (e.g. AI confinement, chaining, Oracle AI, FAI) that have been made.

One of the categories is "They Will Need Us" - claims that AI is no big risk, because AI will always have a need of something that humans have, and that they will therefore preserve us. Currently this section is pretty empty:

Supporting a mutually beneficial legal or economic arrangement is the view that AGIs will need humans. For example, Butler (1863) argues that machines will need us to help them reproduce, and Lucas (1961) suggests that machines could never show Gödelian sentences true, though humans can see them as true.

But I'm certain that I've heard this claim made more often than in just those two sources. Does anyone remember having seen such arguments somewhere else? While "academically reputable" sources (papers, books) are preferred, blog posts and websites are fine as well.

Note that this claim is distinct from the claim that (due to general economic theory) it's more beneficial for the AIs to trade with us than to destroy us. We already have enough citations for that argument, what we're looking for are arguments saying that destroying humans would mean losing something essentially irreplaceable.
Brainstorming additional AI risk reduction ideas
by John_Maxwell — 2012-06-14T07:55:41.377Z

It looks as though lukeprog has finished his series on how to purchase AI risk reduction. But the ideas lukeprog shares are not the only available strategies. Can Less Wrong come up with more?

A summary of recommendations from Exploring the Idea Space Efficiently:

Deliberately avoid exposing yourself to existing lines of thought on how to solve a problem. (The idea here is to defeat anchoring and the availability heuristic.) So don't review lukeprog's series or read the comments on this thread before generating ideas.

Start by identifying broad categories where ideas might be found. If you're trying to think of calculus word problems, your broad categories might be "jobs, personal life, the natural world, engineering, other".

With these initial broad categories, try to include all the categories that might contain a solution and none that will not.

Then generate subcategories. Subcategories of "jobs" might include "agriculture, teaching, customer service, manufacturing, research, IT, other". You're also encouraged to generate subsubcategories and so on.

Spend more time on those categories that seem promising.

You may wish to map your categories and subcategories on a piece of paper.

If you don't like that approach, here's another that's more difficult to summarize. Of course, unstructured idea generation is fine too.

If you're strictly a lurker, you can send your best ideas to lukeprog anonymously using his feedback box. Or send them to me anonymously using my feedback box so I can post them here and get all your karma.

Thread Usage

Please reply here if you wish to comment on the idea of this thread.

You're encouraged to discuss the ideas of others in addition to coming up with your own ideas.

If you split your ideas into individual comments, they can be voted on individually and you will probably increase your karma haul.
[SEQ RERUN] The Design Space of Minds in General
by MinibearRex — 2012-06-14T04:58:05.647Z

Today's post, The Design Space of Minds-In-General was originally published on 25 June 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

When people talk about "AI", they're talking about an incredibly wide range of possibilities. Having a word like "AI" is like having a word for everything which isn't a duck.

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 The Psychological Unity of Humankind, 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.
[Link] Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?
by daenerys — 2012-06-14T03:41:08.384Z

From the Harvard Business Review, an article entitled: "Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?"

By: Greg McKeown
Posted: June 12, 2012

Clicky Link of Awesome! Wheee! Push me!

Summary:

Royal Canadian Mounted Police attempt a program where they hand out "Positive Tickets"

Their approach was to try to catch youth doing the right things and give them a Positive Ticket. The ticket granted the recipient free entry to the movies or to a local youth center. They gave out an average of 40,000 tickets per year. That is three times the number of negative tickets over the same period. As it turns out, and unbeknownst to Clapham, that ratio (2.9 positive affects to 1 negative affect, to be precise) is called the Losada Line. It is the minimum ratio of positive to negatives that has to exist for a team to flourish. On higher-performing teams (and marriages for that matter) the ratio jumps to 5:1. But does it hold true in policing?

According to Clapham, youth recidivism was reduced from 60% to 8%. Overall crime was reduced by 40%. Youth crime was cut in half. And it cost one-tenth of the traditional judicial system.

This idea can be applied to Real Life

The lesson here is to create a culture that immediately and sincerely celebrates victories. Here are three simple ways to begin:

1. Start your next staff meeting with five minutes on the question: "What has gone right since our last meeting?" Have each person acknowledge someone else's achievement in a concrete, sincere way. Done right, this very small question can begin to shift the conversation.

2. Take two minutes every day to try to catch someone doing the right thing. It is the fastest and most positive way for the people around you to learn when they are getting it right.

3. Create a virtual community board where employees, partners and even customers can share what they are grateful for daily. Sounds idealistic? Vishen Lakhiani, CEO of Mind Valley, a new generation media and publishing company, has done just that at Gratitude Log. (Watch him explain how it works here).
Interest in Meetups starting this fall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?
by  — 2012-06-14T03:14:01.884Z

I will be starting as a freshman at UIUC this fall, as a Math/CS major. The only interest in a Less Wrong meetup I've found is this /r/uiuc thread from 8 months ago. I would like to possibly start a google group of interested people so that we can hit the ground running with a meetup group in the fall. If you will be at UIUC in the fall and are interested, PM me or post in this thread. Thank you! I'm really excited about this.
Sebastian Thrun AMA on reddit [link]
by Dr_Manhattan — 2012-06-14T02:53:15.258Z

http://udacity.blogspot.com/2012/06/sebastian-thrun-udacity-ceo-will.html

While Sebastian is not an AGI researcher his reputation in the broad AI community is high due to him largely making self-driving cars happen (and those are autonomous AI systems, even if narrow). I think his opinion of AGI might worth asking (he has a high position in Google's X-labs)

He is also interesting from due to a number of innovations he partook in that are likely to be pretty historical

Self-driving cars

Formation of Udacity is likely to be remembered as the "event that changed college-level online education"

I don't know how much he is responsible for this directly, but Google X is making headway with pretty futuristic HUD devices that are likely to significantly increase human-computer integration

Link to thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/v59z3/iam_sebastian_thrun_stanford_professor_google_x/
Computation Hazards
by Alex_Altair — 2012-06-13T21:49:19.986Z

This is a summary of material from various posts and discussions. My thanks to Eliezer Yudkowsky, Daniel Dewey, Paul Christiano, Nick Beckstead, and several others.

Several ideas have been floating around LessWrong that can be organized under one concept, relating to a subset of AI safety problems. I’d like to gather these ideas in one place so they can be discussed as a unified concept. To give a definition:

A computation hazard is a large negative consequence that may arise merely from vast amounts of computation, such as in a future supercomputer.

For example, suppose a computer program needs to model people very accurately to make some predictions, and it models those people so accurately that the "simulated" people can experience conscious suffering. In a very large computation of this type, millions of people could be created, suffer for some time, and then be destroyed when they are no longer needed for making the predictions desired by the program. This idea was first mentioned by Eliezer Yudkowsky in Nonperson Predicates.

There are other hazards that may arise in the course of running large-scale computations. In general, we might say that:

Large amounts of computation will likely consist in running many diverse algorithms. Many algorithms are computation hazards. Therefore, all else equal, the larger the computation, the more likely it is to produce a computation hazard.

Of course, most algorithms may be morally neutral. Furthermore, algorithms must be somewhat complex before they could possibly be a hazard. For instance, it is intuitively clear that no eight-bit program could possibly be a computation hazard on a normal computer. Worrying computations therefore fall into two categories: computations that run most algorithms, and computations that are particularly likely to run algorithms that are computation hazards.

An example of a computation that runs most algorithms is a mathematical formalism called Solomonoff induction. First published in 1964, it is an attempt to formalize the scientific process of induction using the theory of Turing machines. It is a brute-force method that finds hypotheses to explain data by testing all possible hypotheses. Many of these hypotheses may be algorithms that describe the functioning of people. At a sufficient precision, these algorithms themselves may experience consciousness and suffering. Taken literally, ...
Meetup : São Paulo Meet Up 3
by dyokomizo — 2012-06-13T19:44:54.023Z

Discussion article for the meetup : São Paulo Meet Up 3

WHEN:
15 June 2012 02:00:00PM (-0300)

WHERE:
Sala 08 do Prédio de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais, USP - Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 315 (Cidade Universitária) São Paulo, SP

There's going to be an event at USP titled 1ª Jornada Transhumanista (http://comunicacao.fflch.usp.br/node/1772). After the talks we're planning to have at least one hour of discussions related to rationality and transhumanism.

Most of previous meetups' attendees are going to be there, two of them presenting at the event.
See you there.

Discussion article for the meetup : São Paulo Meet Up 3
Meetup : São Paulo Meet Up 3
by dyokomizo — 2012-06-13T19:40:12.728Z

WHEN: 15 June 2012 02:00:00PM (-0300)

WHERE: Sala 08 do Prédio de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais, USP - Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 315 (Cidade Universitária) São Paulo, SP

There's going to be an event at USP titled 1ª Jornada Transhumanista. After the talks we're planning to have at least one hour of discussions related to rationality and transhumanism.

Most of previous meetups' attendees are going to be there, two of them presenting at the event.

See you there.