trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Madison Monday Meetup
by fiddlemath — 2012-02-10T05:12:56.563Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison Monday Meetup

WHEN:
13 February 2012 06:30:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
1831 Monroe St, Madison, WI

I'll prepare a short talk on the conditions under which expert
judgment is good evidence, the conditions in which "experts" will make
confident predictions that turn out to be essentially random, and the
spaces in between. Beyond learning more about what claims to take
seriously, I'm betting that this research can yield advanced
techniques for not lying to yourself.

Also, though I don't especially mean to drive the conversation there,
I'm sure we'll continue to examine consequentialism. If anybody can
clearly describe a more satisfying metaethics than is in, say,
Yvain's Consequentialism FAQ -- concisely
enough that you can actually explain it during the meetup, with its
attendant interruptions -- then I will totally buy you coffee or
chocolate. :)

Also, does this koan have the Buddha-nature?

Discussion article for the meetup : Madison Monday Meetup
The Neuroscience of Moral Motivation (Part 1)
by  — 2012-02-10T03:37:16.258Z

Edit: Oops, I made a mistake. Sorry about that. I'm going to consolidate the parts into one post.

Imagine you are walking down a Los Angeles street when you see a homeless man. He's sitting outside a coffee shop and begging for food. You stop to give him a sympathetic look. Quickly, you enter the shop to buy a muffin and juice. You then give him the food, which he happily takes. After wishing him well, you continue on walking. By many accounts, you have just done a morally good action.1

In real life, you may never have given food to a starving man. However, it is likely that you have done other morally good actions.2 Maybe you have done volunteer work in your community. Maybe you have donated to charity. Think of a time you did a morally good action. Got it? Good.

How can we explain why you committed this moral action? Or more broadly, how can we explain why we act at all? One popular explanation of action comes from folk psychology. As Luke summarizes, "[f]olk psychology posits that we humans have beliefs and desires, and that we are motivated to do what we believe will fulfill our desires."3 While the folk psychology model is useful for daily life, it has several grave flaws.4

In response to these flaws, economists have refined and quantified folk psychology into neoclassical economics. These economic models are more useful than folk psychology for explaining and predicting human action. However, as Luke points out, they still aren't perfect. In "A Crash Course in the Neuroscience of Human Motivation," Luke describes the challenges these models face. Moreover, he details how the neoclassical model can be further improved and reduced through the insights of modern neuroscience.

Nevertheless, that reduction only covers amoral actions. We're still left with the question at the beginning of this post: what is the explanation for our moral actions? What causal roles (if any) do our beliefs, desires, and feelings play? This sequence uses neuroscience to shed light on those questions. It will do so over the course of four posts.

This is the first post, which serves as an introduction. It has introduced the driving question behind the sequence. The remainder outlines the next three posts.

The second post giv...
The Principle of Maximum Entropy
by krey — 2012-02-10T03:10:46.602Z

After having read the related chapters of Jaynes' book I was fairly amazed by the Principle of Maximum Entropy, a powerful method for choosing prior distributions. However it immediately raised a large number of questions.

I have recently read two quite intriguing (and very well-written) papers by Jos Uffink on this matter:

Can the maximum entropy principle be explained as a consistency requirement?

The constraint rule of the maximum entropy principle

I was wondering what you think about the principle of maximum entropy and its justifications.
My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination
by lukeprog — 2012-02-10T02:48:18.812Z

Part of the sequence: The Science of Winning at Life

After three months of practice, I now use a single algorithm to beat procrastination most of the times I face it.1 It probably won't work for you quite like it did for me, but it's the best advice on motivation I've got, and it's a major reason I'm known for having the "gets shit done" property. There are reasons to hope that we can eventually break the chain of akrasia; maybe this post is one baby step in the right direction.

How to Beat Procrastination explained our best current general theory of procrastination, called "temporal motivation theory" (TMT). As an exercise in practical advice backed by deep theories, this post explains the process I use to beat procrastination — a process implied by TMT.

As a reminder, here's a rough sketch of how motivation works according to TMT:

Or, as Piers Steel summarizes:

Decrease the certainty or the size of a task's reward — its expectancy or its value — and you are unlikely to pursue its completion with any vigor. Increase the delay for the task's reward and our susceptibility to delay — impulsiveness — and motivation also dips.

Of course, my motivation system is more complex than that. P.J. Eby likens TMT (as a guide for beating procrastination) to the "fuel, air, ignition, and compression" plan for starting your car: it might be true, but a more useful theory would include details and mechanism.

That's a fair criticism. Just as an fMRI captures the "big picture" of brain function at low resolution, TMT captures the big picture of motivation. This big picture helps us see where we need to work at the gears-and-circuits level, so we can become the goal-directed consequentialists we'd like to be.

So, I'll share my four-step algorithm below, and tackle the gears-and-circuits level in later posts.

Step 1: Notice I'm procrastinating.

This part's easy. I know I should do the task, but I feel averse to doing it, or I just don't feel motivated enough to care. So I put it off, even though my prefrontal cortex keeps telling me I'll be better off if I do it now. When this happens, I proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Guess which unattacked part of the equation is causing me the most trouble.

Now I get to play detective. Which part of the equation is causing me trouble, here? Does the task have low value because it's boring or painful or too difficult, or because the reward isn't th...
Beyond Reasonable Doubt? - Richard Dawkins [link]
by Dreaded_Anomaly — 2012-02-10T02:28:27.089Z

A new article looking at the jury system rationally and scientifically.

Excerpt:

Courtroom dramas accurately portray the suspense that hangs in the air when the jury returns and delivers its verdict. All, including the lawyers on both sides and the judge, are on tenterhooks and hold their breath while they wait to hear the foreman of the jury pronounce the words, “Guilty” or “Not guilty”. However, if the phrase “beyond reasonable doubt” means what it says, there should be no doubt of the outcome in the mind of anybody who has sat through the same trial as the jury. That includes the judge who, as soon as the jury has delivered its verdict, is prepared to give the order for execution — or release the prisoner without a stain on his character.

And yet, before the jury returned, there was enough “reasonable doubt” in that same judge’s mind to keep him on tenterhooks waiting for the verdict.

You cannot have it both ways. Either the verdict is beyond reasonable doubt, in which case there should be no suspense while the jury is out. Or there is real, nail-biting suspense, in which case you cannot claim that the case has been proved “beyond reasonable doubt”.

This really struck me as something that could have been on LW's front page.
3^^^3 holes and <10^(3*10^31) pigeons (or vice versa)
by Dmytry — 2012-02-10T01:25:55.463Z

The reasoning about huge numbers of beings is a recurring theme here. Knuth's up-arrow notation is often used, with 3^^^3 as the number of beings.

I want to note that if a being is made of 10^30 parts, with 10^30 distinct states of each part, the number of distinct being states is (10^30)^(10^30) = 10^(3*10^31) . That's not a very big number; stacking uparrows quickly gets you to much larger numbers.

To quote from Torture Vs Dust Specks:

3^3 = 27.

3^^3 = (3^(3^3)) = 3^27 = 7625597484987.

3^^^3 = (3^^(3^^3)) = 3^^7625597484987 = (3^(3^(3^(... 7625597484987 times ...)))).

3^^^3 is an exponential tower of 3s which is 7,625,597,484,987 layers tall. You start with 1; raise 3 to the power of 1 to get 3; raise 3 to the power of 3 to get 27; raise 3 to the power of 27 to get 7625597484987; raise 3 to the power of 7625597484987 to get a number much larger than the number of atoms in the universe, but which could still be written down in base 10, on 100 square kilometers of paper; then raise 3 to that power; and continue until you've exponentiated 7625597484987 times. That's 3^^^3. It's the smallest simple inconceivably huge number I know.

That's an unimaginably bigger number than 10^(3*10^31) . You just can't have 3^^^3 distinct humans (or the beings that are to human as human is to amoeba, or that repeated zillion times, or distinct universes for that matter). Most of them will be exactly identical to very many others among the 3^^^3 and have exactly identical experience*.

Of course, our reasoning does not somehow subconsciously impose a reasonable cap on number of beings and end up rational afterwards. I'm not arguing that gut feeling includes such consideration. (I'd say it usually just considers substantially different things incomparable and in-convertible, plus the space of utility needs not be one dimensional)

I've made this pigeon-hole example to demonstrate a failure with really huge numbers, that can undermine by an inconceivably huge factor the reasoning that seems rational and utilitarian and carefully done.

Also, it does seem to me that if the reasoning with huge numbers is likely to result in reasoning errors, then it can be rational to adopt some constraints/safeguards (e.g. veto approval of torture on basis of dust specks, veto pascal's mugging with very huge numbers, perhaps in general veto conversion between things of very di...
Counter-irrationality
by Spectral_Dragon — 2012-02-09T20:04:26.597Z

I don't think anyone here is perfect, though a lot here is simply brilliant logic. Though, as humans, we're automatically biased for or against something, at times for the wrong things and reasons. No bias at all isn't something we're equipped for, and to me sounds quite dull. Some things we have to believe, even as with our limited lifespan it would be very hard to learn everything.

Anyway, on to my actual point: How often do you realise you're biased for the wrong reasons, and you argue more for winning than being right? Also, what irrationality can you point out, and how to fight it? This could apply to you, or those around you, doesn't matter as no one's perfect. But as usual, we should try to at least be better.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to best deal with unreasonable demands. A theological debate which eventually went "Well, if science can't do X, it is flawed, and we should accept that some questions are unanswerable.", and I'm working out the most efficient counter-argument (leaning towards "that's why we should try to see if it's impossible or not"). Anyway, share your thoughts on this, how to be efficiently rational, though if you try to help me, I'd like more questions instead of answers. I value the process of rationality more than straight-up answers, even though it's frustrating as it is.

Basically: Flaws you encounter and how to fight them efficiently, maybe [Bayesian Judo style](http://lesswrong.com/lw/i5/bayesian_judo/).
Meetup : Moscow 11 February meetup
by BT_Uytya — 2012-02-09T18:39:17.773Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow 11 February meetup

WHEN:
11 February 2012 06:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Mayakovskaya (Subway Station), Moscow, Russia

Despite the map (I have no idea why, but it shows wrong place), location of the meetup is Metro Mayakovskaya (in the center of the hall). For further information - turchin.livejournal.com

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow 11 February meetup
Feed the spinoff heuristic!
by CarlShulman — 2012-02-09T07:41:28.468Z

Follow-up to:

Parapsychology: the control group for science

Some Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream in Unfamiliar Fields

Recent renewed discussions of the parapsychology literature and Daryl Bem's recent precognition article brought to mind the "market test" of claims of precognition. Bem tells us that random undergraduate students were able to predict with 53% accuracy where an erotic image would appear in the future. If this effect was actually real, I would rerun the experiment before corporate earnings announcements, central bank interest rate changes, etc, and change the images based on the reaction of stocks and bonds to the announcements. In other words, I could easily convert "porn precognition" into "hedge fund trillionaire precognition."

If I was initially lacking in the capital to do trades, I could publish my predictions online using public key cryptography and amass an impressive track record before recruiting investors. If anti-psi prejudice was a problem, no one need know how I was making my predictions. Similar setups could exploit other effects claimed in the parapsychology literature (e.g. the remote viewing of the Scientologist-founded Stargate Project of the U.S. federal government). Those who assign a lot of credence to psi may want to actually try this, but for me this is an invitation to use parapsychology as control group for science, and to ponder a general heuristic for crudely estimating the soundness of academic fields for outsiders.

One reason we trust that physicists and chemists have some understanding of their subjects is that they produce valuable technological spinoffs with concrete and measurable economic benefit. In practice, I often make use of the spinoff heuristic: If an unfamiliar field has the sort of knowledge it claims, what commercial spinoffs and concrete results ought it to be producing? Do such spinoffs exist? What are the explanations for their absence?

For psychology, I might cite systematic desensitization of specific phobias such as fear of spiders, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and military use of IQ tests (with large measurable changes in accident rates, training costs, etc). In financial economics, I would raise the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in index funds, founded in response to academic research, and their outperformance relative to managed funds. ...
[SEQ RERUN] Superexponential Conceptspace, and Simple Words
by MinibearRex — 2012-02-09T04:55:16.024Z

Today's post, Superexponential Conceptspace, and Simple Words was originally published on 24 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

You draw an unsimple boundary without any reason to do so. The act of defining a word to refer to all humans, except black people, seems kind of suspicious. If you don't present reasons to draw that particular boundary, trying to create an "arbitrary" word in that location is like a detective saying: "Well, I haven't the slightest shred of support one way or the other for who could've murdered those orphans... but have we considered John Q. Wiffleheim as a suspect?"

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 Mutual Information, and Density in Thingspace, 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.
New book from leading neuroscientist in support of cryonics and mind uploading
by lukeprog — 2012-02-08T21:36:59.574Z

Sebastian Seung's new book Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are is very well-written, and aimed at a broad audience.

The penultimate chapter explains why cryonics might make sense given our current understanding of the brain.

The final chapter does the same for mind uploading.

Transhumanism continues its march into the mainstream.

Despite its flaws, I recommend the book.
Moscow meetup: Saturday 6 PM
by BT_Uytya — 2012-02-08T21:25:58.173Z

WHEN: 11 February 2012 06:00:00PM (Moscow time)

WHERE: Place is yet to be determined; I hope this issue will be dealt with tomorrow.

UPD.: So it is Metro Mayakovskaya; Meetup link: http://lesswrong.com/meetups/6x
Motivation on the margin of saving the world
by KatjaGrace — 2012-02-08T19:32:11.000Z

Most people feel that they have certain responsibilities in life. If they achieve those they feel good about themselves, and anything they do beyond that to make the world better is an increasingly imperceptible bonus.

Some people with unusual moral positions or preferences feel responsible for making everything in the world as good as they can make it, and feel bad about the gap between what they achieve and what they could.

In both cases people have a kind of baseline that they care especially about. In the first case they are usually so far above it that nothing they do makes much difference to their feelings. In the second case they are often so far below it that nothing they do makes much difference to their feelings.

Games are engaging when you have a decent chance at both winning and losing. Every move you make matters, so you long to make that one more move.

I expect the same is true of motivating altruistic consequentialists. I’m not sure how to make achievements on the margin more emotionally salient, but perhaps you do?
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wedneday 7pm
by EvelynM — 2012-02-08T18:23:03.381Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wedneday 7pm

WHEN:
08 February 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524

Sorry for the short notice. We will be having our usual meetups every Wednesday in February.

Please sign up for the mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/less-wrong-fort-collins-co

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wedneday 7pm
Meetup : Twin Cities South Metro
by hewhocutsdown — 2012-02-08T14:24:55.275Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Twin Cities South Metro

WHEN:
06 March 2012 08:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
7083 153rd St. W, Apple Valley, MN

I see that there was some interest a couple years back for a Minneapolis meetup, I'm going to give it a shot again, but south of the river instead of on campus.

This first meeting will be a get-to-know-each-other event, as well as a time to decide future meetup content and structure.

Discussion article for the meetup : Twin Cities South Metro
Bayesian RPG system?
by DataPacRat — 2012-02-08T11:53:20.938Z

This is one of those sleep-deprived middle-of-the-night ideas which I'm reasonably likely to regret posting in the morning once I really wake up - but which, at least at the moment, thinking on my more-corrupted-than-standard hardware, seems like a cool idea.

Most role-playing games have a system for determining whether or not certain actions are successful or not. Most of the time, these can be described as setting a target number, and rolling one or more dice, with various modifiers - eg, you might have to roll a 13 or higher on a twenty-sided dice to correctly answer the sphinx's riddle, and having your handy Book of Ancient Puzzles to refer to may give you a +3 bonus to your die-roll.

How insane and awful an idea would it be to have an RPG system whose core mechanic wasn't based on linear probabilities like that... but, instead, on decibels of Bayesian probability? For example, instead of a bonus adding a straight +3 to a d20, or increasing your odds by 15% no matter how easy the task or how skilled you are, the bonus adds +3 decibels: changing your odds from 50% to 66% if you started out with a middling chance, but only increasing it from 90% to 95% if you're already very skilled.

(And now, back to sleep, and to see how much karma I've lost come the morning...)
Meetup : Melbourne social meetup
by shokwave — 2012-02-08T11:03:04.962Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup

WHEN:
17 February 2012 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
see mailing list; Carlton, VIC

Melbourne's next social meetup is on Friday, 17th February. Continuing the tradition, we'll meet at Ben's house - see the mailing list for location details, or I can give you the address - you can call me at 0432 862 932, or email me at shokwave.sf@gmail.com, or inbox me by clicking on my name.

Some form of take-away will be organised for dinner and there will be snacks available. BYO drinks.

We'll be moving away from long board games; bring short ones or suggestions if you have any. There will be at least one game of Mafia!

It will help attendance numbers to comment, saying you'll be attending. We look forward to seeing you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne social meetup
Meetup : Houston Meetup - 2/12
by Cog — 2012-02-08T09:16:43.295Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup - 2/12

WHEN:
12 February 2012 02:00:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
2010 Commerce St, Houston, TX 77002, USA

We will be going over E.T. Jayne's "The Logic of Science" this Sunday at 2PM.The goal, established at the last meeting, will be to go over the exercises in Chapter 2 and to have read chapter 3. We will also be discussing the possibility of forming a class on neural networks in the hackerspace.

Food, as always is an option. Usually, some type of communal breakfast food is already being cooked, so bring money for the tip jar if you wish to partake.

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Meetup - 2/12
Meetup : Philadelphia LW: Macroeconomics crash course and general meetup
by DasAllFolks — 2012-02-08T04:56:03.389Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Philadelphia LW: Macroeconomics crash course and general meetup

WHEN:
15 February 2012 06:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
1301 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19107-3521 US

We'll be meeting at the Starbucks in Macy's Center City (conveniently located near Suburban Station for you traingoers!) from 6:30 - 8:30 P.M.

This week's featured topic will be a "crash course" in macroeconomics from one of our members, who also happens to be a graduate student in economics, in continuation of some fairly lengthy and interesting economic discussions that came out of our first meetup in January (not that you shouldn't come if you weren't there...please feel free to stop by regardless of your history with either LW meetups or economics in general!).

Agenda will also include general self-improvement, planning future meetups, and, of course, better getting to know new members and attendees from last meetup alike. We hope to see you there!

Also: please feel free to request an invitation to our Google group (http://groups.google.com/group/lesswrong-philadelphia) if you would like to discuss meetup ideas (including the details of this upcoming one) in real time, and/or would generally like to start talking to people prior to convening in meat space!

Discussion article for the meetup : Philadelphia LW: Macroeconomics crash course and general meetup