trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Experience diets
by KatjaGrace — 2016-12-04T23:03:06.000Z

Imagine you have a part of your mind that just keeps track of which visceral experiences you have how often, and then expects more experiences in that ratio. So if you look at pictures of crocodiles, it feels like crocodiles are a bigger part of what is going on in the world. And then if you watch ten youtube videos of people slapping each other in the face, it feels like it is more normal for people to slap each other in the face. If you get up late in the day for a while, it tells you that the world is mostly dark. If you see starving people, it populates its simulated world with starving people (rather than just those magazine pictures of starving people it previously knew about).

‘Visceral’ is vague, but let’s say there are some kinds of experience it can understand, and some it can’t. Anecdotes and pictures and direct experience are intelligible, but it interprets more abstract datasets as ‘sometimes there are abstract datasets’. Like a reinforcement learner which can perceive a large subset of the stimuli that other parts of our minds can respond to, though not all of them.

And suppose that you can even intellectually notice that you are responding badly to seeing a few crocodile pictures, but the kinds of mental parts that can ‘intellectually notice’ things don’t speak any languages that the other part knows, so they can’t just directly fix the problem with explicit efforts. The best they can do is choose to look at a bunch of the most compelling non-crocodile stuff they can find until the other mental part gets the picture. And the whole time you would feel like you have an accurate account of the world.

My impression is that this is what humans are like to some extent, but I don’t know the extent or exact nature of the interaction between this and other ways that humans are. I also don’t know whether this is all a thing that experts have an excellent understanding of, because this is not currently the kind of blog where the blogger does a bunch of research before they write things.

Anyway, if this picture captured an important part of what was going on in the human mind, I might expect a key issue for humans would be strategizing around what kinds of experiences to consume for worldview warping purposes. For instance, this might come up when you are deciding whether to watch ten videos of people slapping each other on ...
N=1 Self Analysis
by NatashaRostova — 2016-12-04T20:36:08.190Z

The N=1 scientific field of self-study doesn't seem to have much established basis. It mostly seems to exist through self-experimentation of drugs by through non-conventional channels (i.e. mostly non-academic).

It seems incredibly useful to me, but very awkward. Our brains are powerful, and arguably the most foundational object of analysis for social sciences. Our own brain is also the only human brain we get unrestricted access to. I think, for most people, the base assumption is their brain is special and not a distinct unit of analysis. For a complex bunch of reasons that are hard to pin down, but probably have to do with the fact that most of us have studied methodology or tech, the LW wrong tends to view our own brains as not particularly special computers.

Combine that with studying the persistent biases human brains have with their interaction with reality, we (or at least I) view my own conscious voice as a guy sitting behind a computer running a really advanced program, but one which has lots of biases he has to adjust for. It's only a metaphor, but I'd bet lots of you have similar metaphors for understanding your own thoughts.

Let me give a contemporary example that sparked this post (but not necessarily the main discussion point, or something I'm going to cite sources to back up): Humans seem to have a strong pull towards tribalistic and in-group tendencies. I match the description of 'white man.' Living in the U.S. for the past couple years I have become acutely aware of this for the first time, after having it pointed out to me (usually as a bad thing). My personal model of the world aligns with guys like Jonathan Haidt -- I view tribal and ethno-divided politics as dangerous for democratic stability.

The only reason I bring this up is I've felt this tribalistic pull 'within my brain' (which is such an awkward and strange thing to say). Once I started feeling this in late 2014 I had a strong prediction that there was going to be a new movement associated (I wasn't sure how big, but I put money on Trump winning in Jan 2015). I knew that I was reading much more than other people, and that if I had this feeling lots of others were going to develop it as well. (My point here is that I'm not tribalistic, don't think it's useful for our gov structure, and actually view it as distracting towards much more fruitful goals, but I can't help but feel it).

It's...
Some thoughts on double crux.
by ProofOfLogic — 2016-12-04T18:03:14.618Z

[Epistemic status: quite speculative. I've attended a CFAR workshop including a lesson on double crux, and found it wore counterintuitive than I expected. I ran my own 3-day event going through the CFAR courses with friends, including double crux, but I don't think anyone started doing double crux based on my attempt to teach it. I have been collecting notes on my thoughts about double crux so as to not lose any; this is a synthesis of some of those notes.]

This is a continuation of my attempt to puzzle at Double Crux until it feels intuitive. While I think I understand the _algorithm_ of double crux fairly well, and I _have_ found it useful when talking to someone else who is trying to follow the algorithm, I haven't found that I can explain it to others in a way that causes them to do the thing, and I think this reflects a certain lack of understanding on my part. Perhaps others with a similar lack of understanding will find my puzzling useful.

Here's a possible argument for double crux as a way to avoid certain conversational pitfalls. This argument is framed as a sort of "diff" on my current conversational practices, which are similar to those mentioned by CCC. So, here is approximately what I do when I find an interesting disagreement:

We somehow decide who states their case first. (Usually, whoever is most eager.) That person gives an argument for their side, while checking for understanding from the other person and looking for points of disagreement with the argument.

The other person asks questions until they think they understand the whole argument; or, sometimes, skip to step 3 when a high-value point of disagreement is apparent before the full argument is understood.

Recurse into step 1 for the most important-seeming point of disagreement in the argument offered. (Again the person whose turn it is to argue their case will be chosen "somehow"; it may or may not switch.)

If that process is stalling out (the argument is not understood by the other person after a while of trying, or the process is recursing into deeper and deeper sub-points without seeming to get closer to the heart of the disagreement), switch roles; the person who has explained the least of their view should now give an argument for their side.

Steps 1-3 can have a range of possible results [using 'you' as the argument-giver and 'they' as the receiver]:

In the best case, t

...
Search, and ye shall find
by Jacob Falkovich — 2016-12-04T00:07:48.000Z

Hey, reader, how did you get here? Are you subscribed to Putanumonit? Clicked on a tweet or a status or a post? Followed a trail from SlateStarCodex or LessWrong? Either way, you probably know what to expect here. And, you deserve what’s coming to you.

But some people took a more interesting path to this blog. According to WordPress Stats, back in January someone googled ‘nextpart and hack’ and the 7th page of the results took them to my post on water charities. Others arrived on Putanumonit after googling ‘gern’, ‘sci-put’, ‘utrgv “wewillfail”‘ and ‘ya fat njie’. I have no clue what any of these people were looking for , but I doubt they found it on Putanumonit. And if there’s anything I really hate is leaving a client unsatisfied.

I decided to go through the list of search terms that brought people to the blog, and help them out with their unanswered queries. At the end, I’ll share my absolute favorite link to Putanumonit, one that by itself would have made the hundreds of hours I spend on this site worthwhile.

There but for the grace of Google go I

Original search terms in blockquotes.

messi before growth hormones

messi b4 when messi was a dwarf

He was actually a hobbit.

Credit: tiobolasdoro, via cheeksoftheweek

lotto king

That’s what my LinkedIn profile says.

“intelligent life economist”

That’s what my Tinder profile says.

second option to keep 3galloping horse in tge living room of narth facing house

I don’t know what the first option was, but I would go with that one.

tribalism in the old testament

How about Samuel 15:3 – “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

March 2016: is an ugly guy doomed as a pua

June 2016: dry spell pua

I guess you got your answer. Maybe you should try a more considerate and respectful approach to dating?

August 2016: a dramatic poem u’r intelligent girl

August 2016: pua date wait next week

There ya go!

penny’s size bell curve

85% single

Does the guy you see once a week know that you consider yourself “85% single”?

which number is used for happiness

1-800-SHROOMS

waiting for ur text

Sorry mom.

girlfriend boyfriend love percenta

...
CFAR’s new focus, and AI Safety
by AnnaSalamon — 2016-12-03T18:09:13.688Z

A bit about our last few months:

We’ve been working on getting a simple clear mission and an organization that actually works. We think of our goal as analogous to the transition that the old Singularity Institute underwent under Lukeprog (during which chaos was replaced by a simple, intelligible structure that made it easier to turn effort into forward motion).

As part of that, we’ll need to find a way to be intelligible.

This is the first of several blog posts aimed at causing our new form to be visible from outside. (If you're in the Bay Area, you can also come meet us at tonight's open house.) (We'll be talking more about the causes of this mission-change; the extent to which it is in fact a change, etc. in an upcoming post.)

Here's a short explanation of our new mission:

We care a lot about AI Safety efforts in particular, and about otherwise increasing the odds that humanity reaches the stars.

Also, we[1] believe such efforts are bottlenecked more by our collective epistemology, than by the number of people who verbally endorse or act on "AI Safety", or any other "spreadable viewpoint" disconnected from its derivation.

Our aim is therefore to find ways of improving both individual thinking skill, and the modes of thinking and social fabric that allow people to think together. And to do this among the relatively small sets of people tackling existential risk.

To elaborate a little:

Existential wins and AI safety

By an “existential win”, we mean humanity creates a stable, positive future. We care a heck of a lot about this one.

Our working model here accords roughly with the model in Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence. In particular, we believe that if general artificial intelligence is at some point invented, it will be an enormously big deal.

(Lately, AI Safety is being discussed by everyone from The Economist to Newsweek to Obama to an open letter from eight thousand. But we’ve been thinking on this, and backchaining partly from it, since before that.)

Who we’re focusing on, why

Our preliminary investigations agree with The Onion’s; despite some looking, we have found no ultra-competent group of people behind the scenes who have fully got things covered.

What we have found are:

AI and machine learning graduate students, re

...
Fact Posts: How and Why
by sarahconstantin — 2016-12-02T18:55:10.338Z

The most useful thinking skill I've taught myself, which I think should be more widely practiced, is writing what I call "fact posts." I write a bunch of these on my blog. (I write fact posts about pregnancy and childbirth here.)

To write a fact post, you start with an empirical question, or a general topic. Something like "How common are hate crimes?" or "Are epidurals really dangerous?" or "What causes manufacturing job loss?"

It's okay if this is a topic you know very little about. This is an exercise in original seeing and showing your reasoning, not finding the official last word on a topic or doing the best analysis in the world.

Then you open up a Google doc and start taking notes.

You look for quantitative data from conventionally reliable sources. CDC data for incidences of diseases and other health risks in the US; WHO data for global health issues; Bureau of Labor Statistics data for US employment; and so on. Published scientific journal articles, especially from reputable journals and large randomized studies.

You explicitly do not look for opinion, even expert opinion. You avoid news, and you're wary of think-tank white papers. You're looking for raw information. You are taking a sola scriptura approach, for better and for worse.

And then you start letting the data show you things.

You see things that are surprising or odd, and you note that.

You see facts that seem to be inconsistent with each other, and you look into the data sources and methodology until you clear up the mystery.

You orient towards the random, the unfamiliar, the things that are totally unfamiliar to your experience. One of the major exports of Germany is valves? When was the last time I even thought about valves? Why valves, what do you use valves in? OK, show me a list of all the different kinds of machine parts, by percent of total exports.

And so, you dig in a little bit, to this part of the world that you hadn't looked at before. You cultivate the ability to spin up a lightweight sort of fannish obsessive curiosity when something seems like it might be a big deal.

And you take casual notes and impressions (though keeping track of all the numbers and their sources in your notes).

You do a little bit of arithmetic to compare things to familiar reference points. How does this source of risk compare to the risk of smoking or g...
Meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
by iarwain1 — 2016-12-02T17:55:44.578Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
04 December 2016 08:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg Room 456, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250

Meeting is on 4th floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Permit parking designations do not apply on weekends, so park pretty much wherever you want.

Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-12-02T16:47:00.094Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on December 2nd. The following week's summary is here.

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

Bay Area Winter Solstice 2016: 17 December 2016 07:00PM
Boston Secular Solstice: 09 December 2016 08:00PM
Denver Area LW December Meetup: 06 December 2016 07:00PM
Moscow social meetup: Party games!: 04 December 2016 02:00PM
NY Solstice 2016 - The Story of Smallpox: 17 December 2016 06:00PM
San Francisco Meetup: Cooking: 05 December 2016 06:15PM
San Jose Meetup: Park Day (X): 04 December 2016 03:00PM
Seattle Secular Solstice: 10 December 2016 04:00PM
Sydney Rationality Dojo - December 2016: 04 December 2016 04:00PM
Vienna Meetup: 17 December 2016 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games: 04 December 2016 03:30PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, Kraków, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Prague, Research Triangle NC, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, St. Petersburg, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers and a Slack channel for daily discussion and online meetups on Sunday night US time.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview is posted on the front page every Friday. These are an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in upcoming weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts are moved to the discussion section when the new post goes 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...
Question about metaethics
by pangel — 2016-12-02T10:21:43.741Z

In a recent Facebook post, Eliezer said :

You can believe that most possible minds within mind design space (not necessarily actual ones, but possible ones) which are smart enough to build a Dyson Sphere, will completely fail to respond to or care about any sort of moral arguments you use, without being any sort of moral relativist. Yes. Really. Believing that a paperclip maximizer won't respond to the arguments you're using doesn't mean that you think that every species has its own values and no values are better than any other.

And so I think part of the metaethics sequence went over my head.

I should re-read it, but I haven't yet. In the meantime I want to give an summary of my current thinking and ask some questions.

My current take on morality is that, unlike facts about the world, morality is a question of preference. The important caveats are :

The preference set has to be consistent. Until we develop something akin to CEV, humans are probably stuck with a pre-morality where they behave and think over time in contradictory ways, and at the same time believe they have a perfectly consistent moral system.

One can be mistaken about morality, but only in the sense that, unknown to them, they actually hold values different from what the deliberative part of their mind thinks it holds. An introspection failure or a logical error can cause the mistake. Once we identify ground values (not that it's effectively feasible), "wrong" is a type error.

It is OK to fight for one's morality. Just because it's subjective doesn't mean one can't push for it. So "moral relativism" in the strong sense isn't a consequence of morality being a preference. But "moral relativism" in the weak, technical sense (it's subjective) is.

I am curious about the following :

How does your current view differ from what I've written above?

How exactly does that differ from the thesis of the metaethics sequence? In the same post, Eliezer also said : "and they thought maybe I was arguing for moral realism...". I did kind of think that, at times.

I specifically do not understand this : "Believing that a paperclip maximizer won't respond to the arguments you're using doesn't mean that you think that every species has its own values and no values are better than any other.". Unless "better" is used in the sense of "better according to my morality", but that would make the sentence barely wort

...
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
by RobinZ — 2016-12-02T03:07:28.771Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games

WHEN:
04 December 2016 03:30:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture

We will be meeting in the courtyard to hang out, play games, and engage in fun conversation.

Upcoming meetups:

Dec. 11: Game Theory

Dec. 18: Statistics

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games
Meetup : SF Meetup: Cooking
by maia — 2016-12-02T03:04:05.355Z

Discussion article for the meetup : SF Meetup: Cooking

WHEN:
05 December 2016 06:15:34PM (-0800)

WHERE:
1655 Mission St., SF

We'll be meeting to cook and eat food together!

Here's how this works: I'll send out a planning doc via the bayarealesswrong mailing list, to recruit 3-5 people to bring a recipe and be "leaders" for their particular dish. Everyone else who shows up will help the leaders as needed with the cooking. I'll ask the leaders to populate a grocery list beforehand so that I can do the grocery shopping, and everyone who shows up and helps eat will split the bill.

If you have dietary restrictions and want to come, feel free to mention that on the mailing list thread to encourage others to choose a dish that will work for you - or lead a dish yourself.

Instead of the usual "wait for stragglers" thing, we'll start the meetup as soon as people show up, since cooking can be time consuming.

For help getting in, call or text 301-458-0764.

About these meetups:

The mission of the SF LessWrong meetup is to provide a fun, low-key social space with some structured interaction, where new and non-new community members can mingle and have interesting conversations. Everyone is welcome.

We explicitly encourage people to split off from the main conversation or diverge from the topic if that would be more fun for them (moving side conversations into a separate part of the space if appropriate). Meetup topics are here as a tool to facilitate fun interaction, and we certainly don’t want them to inhibit it.

Discussion article for the meetup : SF Meetup: Cooking
Which areas of rationality are underexplored? - Discussion Thread
by casebash — 2016-12-01T22:05:27.780Z

There seems to actually be real momentum behind this attempt as reviving Less Wrong. One of the oldest issues on LW has been the lack of content. For this reason, I thought that it might be worthwhile opening a thread where people can suggest how we can expand the scope of what people write about in order for us to have sufficient content.

Does anyone have any ideas about which areas of rationality are underexplored? Please only list one area per comment.