trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Savulescu: "Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction"
by Roko — 2010-01-10T00:26:56.846Z

In this video, Julian Savulescu from the Uehiro centre for Practical Ethics argues that human beings are "Unfit for the future" - that radical technological advance, liberal democracy and human nature will combine to make the 21st century the century of global catastropes, perpetrated by terrorists and psychopaths, with tools such as engineered viruses. He goes on to argue that enhanced intelligence and a reduced urge to violence and defection in large commons problems could be achieved using science, and may be a way out for humanity.

Skip to 1:30 to avoid the tedious introduction

Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction - PART 1 from Ethics of the New Biosciences on Vimeo.

Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction - PART 2 from Ethics of the New Biosciences on Vimeo.

Well, I have already said something rather like this. Perhaps this really is a good idea, more important, even, than coding a friendly AI? AI timelines where super-smart AI doesn't get invented until 2060+ would leave enough room for human intelligence enhancement to happen and have an effect. When I collected some SIAI volunteers' opinions on this, most thought that there was a very significant chance that super-smart AI will arrive sooner than that, though.

A large portion of the video consists of pointing out the very strong scientific case that our behavior is a result of the way our brains are structured, and that this means that changes in our behavior are the result of changes in the way our brains are wired.
Hypotheses For Dualism
by byrnema — 2010-01-09T08:05:56.749Z

In this post I present the first few hypotheses that I can think for why people insist on a metaphysical aspect to consciousness, and develop one in some detail: a "reality is simulated" hypothesis.

Please contribute your own hypotheses. Why is there a persistent belief that consciousness is metaphysical?

I offer some hypotheses for why people have the illusion of a metaphysical aspect to consciousness:

the lack of spatio-temporal information in our thought processes. We have no idea where thoughts occur since there are few physical sensations in our brain when we think. The sense of "another dimension" to thought might disappear if people grew up with images of different parts of their brain lighting up in different patterns as they thought -- even when they think deep, profound and poignant thoughts.

when we think about something, that something can be located anywhere. I can think of a tree on the moon. This may give the feeling that consciousness is spatially 'infinite' and non-local.

If I think about a tree on the moon, I can make someone else think of a tree on the moon without presenting a tree on the moon. This gives the impression that ideas are put into and pulled out of an omnipresent aether.

To some extent in everyday thought, and especially during certain mental states, our thinking actually simulates reality. For example, while dreaming and during so-called "out-of-body" experiences.

Perhaps all of these hypotheses contribute to the impression that consciousness is fundamentally non-physical (outside the physical; meta-physical). It is the last hypothesis that I would like to expand upon in this post. That we actually simulate reality in our thoughts -- and this simulated reality is the dual reality that dualists speak of.

Reality is Simulated Hypothesis

I know that when I look at my hand, the experience is not as immediate and straight-forward as it seems. It's not me "looking at my hand" -- if by 'me' I mean my conscious self. Instead, my brain is putting together an image of my hand based on sensory information it is receiving from my eye. Nor is it even so simple as "it is me that is aware of a constructed image of my hand". Because the part of me that 'sees' the image is still not my conscious 'me'. What is actually going on is that I imagine 'myself' seeing my hand -- that is, I imagine a 'me' and...
Intergenerational inequality
by KatjaGrace — 2010-01-08T12:55:16.000Z

These are common views, held together often:

Modern people are more wasteful of natural resources than their ancestors

Technology won’t save us from this gluttony, all we can do is control ourselves

Humanity should minimize population as well as personal consumption now to preserve natural resources for future generations

.

However if people are following a trend of using natural resources less efficiently, and this won’t be changed by future technology, current people seem likely use natural resources more efficiently than the next few generations. If this is true and the purpose is human wellbeing (as concern for future generations suggests), shouldn’t we try to have a larger population early on, at the expense of having a smaller one later?
Consciousness
by Mitchell_Porter — 2010-01-08T12:18:39.776Z

(ETA: I've created three threads - color, computation, meaning - for the discussion of three questions posed in this article. If you are answering one of those specific questions, please answer there.)

I don't know how to make this about rationality. It's an attack on something which is a standard view, not only here, but throughout scientific culture. Someone else can do the metalevel analysis and extract the rationality lessons.

The local worldview reduces everything to some combination of physics, mathematics, and computer science, with the exact combination depending on the person. I think it is manifestly the case that this does not work for consciousness. I took this line before, but people struggled to understand my own speculations and this complicated the discussion. So the focus is going to be much more on what other people think - like you, dear reader. If you think consciousness can be reduced to some combination of the above, here's your chance to make your case.

The main exhibits will be color and computation. Then we'll talk about reference; then time; and finally the "unity of consciousness".

Color was an issue last time. I ended up going back and forth fruitlessly with several people. From my perspective it's very simple: where is the color in your theory? Whether your physics consists of fields and particles in space, or flows of amplitude in configuration space, or even if you think reality consists of "mathematical structures" or Platonic computer programs, or whatever - I don't see anything red or green there, and yet I do see it right now, here in reality. So if you intend to tell me that reality consists solely of physics, mathematics, or computation, you need to tell me where the colors are.

Occasionally someone says that red and green are just words, and they don't even mean the same thing for different cultures or different people. True. But that's just a matter of classification. It's a fact that the individual shades of color exist, however it is that we group them - and your ontology must contain them, if it pretends to completeness.

Then, there are various other things which have some relation to color - the physics of surface reflection, or the cognitive neuroscience of color attribution. I think we all agree that the first doesn't matter too much; you don't even need blue light to see blue, you just need the right nerves to fire. So...
Does it look like it’s all about happiness?
by KatjaGrace — 2010-01-08T05:42:22.000Z

Humanity’s obsession with status and money is often attributed to a misguided belief that these will bring the happiness we truly hunger. Would be reformers repeat the worldview-shattering news that we can be happier just by being grateful and spending more time with our families and on other admirable activities. Yet the crowds begging for happiness do not appear to heed them.

This popular theory doesn’t explain why people are so ignorant after billions of lifetimes of data about what brings happiness, or alternatively why they are helpless to direct their behavior toward it with the information. The usual counterargument to this story is simply that money and status and all that do in fact bring happiness, so people aren’t that silly after all.

Another explanation for the observed facts is that we don’t actually want happiness that badly; we like status and money too even at the expense of happiness. That requires the opposite explanation, of why we think we like happiness so much.

But first, what’s the evidence that we really want happiness or don’t? Here is some I can think of (please add):

For “We are mostly trying to get happiness and failing”:

We discuss plans in life, even in detail, as if the purpose were happiness

When we are wondering if something was a good choice we ask things like ‘are you happy with it?’

Some things don’t seem to lead to much benefit but enjoyment and are avidly sought, such as some entertainment.

We seem by all accounts both motivated in and fine at getting happiness in immediate term activities – we don’t accidentally watch a TV show or eat chocolate for long before noticing whether we enjoy it. The confusion seems about long term activities and investments.

“We often aren’t trying to get happiness”:

The recent happiness research appears to have fuelled lots of writing and not much hungry implementation of advice. eg I’ve noticed no fashion for writing down what you are grateful for at night starting up. Have I just missed it?

Few people get a few years into a prestigious job, realize status and money don’t bring happiness, declare it all a mistake, and take up joyful poor low status activities

Most things take less than years to evaluate

I don’t seem to do the things that I think would make me most happy.

It seems we pursue roma

...
Reference class of the unclassreferenceable
by taw — 2010-01-08T04:13:36.319Z

One of the most useful techniques of rationality is taking the outside view, also known as reference class forecasting. Instead of thinking too hard about particulars of a given situation and taking a guess which will invariably turned out to be highly biased, one looks at outcomes of situations which are similar in some essential way.

Figuring out correct reference class might sometimes be difficult, but even then it's far more reliable than trying to guess while ignoring the evidence of similar cases. Now in some situations we have precise enough data that inside view might give correct answer - but for almost all such cases I'd expect outside view to be as usable and not far away in correctness.

Something that keeps puzzling me is persistence of certain beliefs on lesswrong. Like belief in effectiveness of cryonics - reference class of things promising eternal (or very long) life is huge and has consistent 0% success rate. Reference class of predictions based on technology which isn't even remotely here has perhaps non-zero but still ridiculously tiny success rate. I cannot think of any reference class in which cryonics does well. Likewise belief in singularity - reference class of beliefs in coming of a new world, be it good or evil, is huge and with consistent 0% success rate. Reference class of beliefs in almost omnipotent good or evil beings has consistent 0% success rate.

And many fellow rationalists not only believe that chances of cryonics or singularity or AI are far from negligible levels indicated by the outside view, they consider them highly likely or even nearly certain!

There are a few ways how this situation can be resolved:

Biting the outside view bullet like me, and assigning very low probability to them.

Finding a convincing reference class in which cryonics, singularity, superhuman AI etc. are highly probable - I invite you to try in comments, but I doubt this will lead anywhere.

Or is there a class of situations for which the outside view is consistently and spectacularly wrong; data is not good enough for precise predictions; and yet we somehow think we can predict them reliably?

How do you reconcile them?
Fictional Evidence vs. Fictional Insight
by Wei Dai — 2010-01-08T01:59:03.452Z

This is a response to Eliezer Yudkowsky's The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence and Alex Flint's When does an insight count as evidence? as well as komponisto's recent request for science fiction recommendations.

My thesis is that insight forms a category that is distinct from evidence, and that fiction can provide insight, even if it can't provide much evidence. To give some idea of what I mean, I'll list the insights I gained from one particular piece of fiction (published in 1992), which have influenced my life to a large degree:

Intelligence may be the ultimate power in this universe.

A technological Singularity is possible.

A bad Singularity is possible.

It may be possible to nudge the future, in particular to make a good Singularity more likely, and a bad one less likely.

Improving network security may be one possible way to nudge the future in a good direction. (Side note: here are my current thoughts on this.)

An online reputation for intelligence, rationality, insight, and/or clarity can be a source of power, because it may provide a chance to change the beliefs of a few people who will make a crucial difference.

So what is insight, as opposed to evidence? First of all, notice that logically omniscient Bayesians have no use for insight. They would have known all of the above without having observed anything (assuming they had a reasonable prior). So insight must be related to logical uncertainty, and a feature only of minds that are computationally constrained. I suspect that we won't fully understand the nature of insight until the problem of logical uncertainty is solved, but here are some of my thoughts about it in the mean time:

A main form of insight is a hypothesis that one hadn't previously entertained, but should be assigned a non-negligible prior probability.

An insight is kind of like a mathematical proof: in theory you could have thought of it yourself, but reading it saves you a bunch of computation.

Recognizing an insight seems easier than coming up with it, but still of nontrivial difficulty.

So a challenge for us is to distinguish true insights from unhelpful distractions in fiction. Eliezer mentioned people who let the Matrix and Terminator dominate their thoughts about the future, and I agree that we have to be careful not to let our minds consider fiction as evidence. But is there also some skill that can...
Case study: Melatonin
by gwern — 2010-01-07T18:24:46.652Z

I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.

Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin
Will reason ever outrun faith?
by ABranco — 2010-01-07T14:00:27.205Z

Recently, a video produced by Christians claimed that the future world would be Muslim. It hit 10 million hits in YouTube. The alarming demographics presented were proven mostly false and exaggerated both by BBC and Snopes. Yet, religion is such a powerful self-replicating memeplex that its competition against atheism deserves some analysis.

Leaving apart the aesthetic nicety of some religious rituals — which I respect —, it would be preferable to see a world with predominance of rationality instead of faith, brights instead of supers. Not just because I whimsically wish so, but because reason ensues atheism. Rationality is the primer here. With more rational agents, the more rationality propagates, and people’s maps will be more accurate. And that’s better for us, human beings*.

(* This sentence is a bit of a strong claim, especially because I am not defining exactly what I mean by ‘better’, and some existential pain might be expected as a consequence of being unaided by the crutches of faith and of being deprived of their cultural antibodies. Also, if happiness happens to be an important attribute of ‘better’, I am not sure to what extent being rational will make people happier. Some people are very ok choosing the blue pill. For the time being, let’s take it as an axiom. The claim that rational is better might deserve a separate post.)

Is a predominantly rational and atheist world probable?

Let’s see. Religion — or the lack thereof — and culture are propagated memetically. The propagation can be (1) vertical (i.e., from parents to children) or (2) horizontally (i.e., friends, media and the like).

(1) It seems quite hopeless for atheists to outgrow religious populations through parenting. First, "countries that are relatively secularized usually reproduce more slowly than countries that are more religious. According to the World Bank, the nations with the largest proportions of unbelievers had an average annual population growth rate of just 0.7% in the period 1975-97, while the populations of the most religious countries grew three times as fast." (from The Economist, Faith Equals Fertility).

As this very same article concludes:

"one might half-seriously conclude that atheists and agnostics ought to focus on having more children, to help overcome their demographic disadvantage....
Rationality Quotes January 2010
by Zack_M_Davis — 2010-01-07T09:36:05.162Z

A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself.

Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Video Answers
by MichaelGR — 2010-01-07T04:40:35.546Z

On October 29th, I asked Eliezer and the LW community if they were interested in doing a video Q&A. Eliezer agreed and a majority of commenters were in favor of the idea, so on November 11th, I created a thread where LWers could submit questions. Dozens of questions were asked, generating a total of over 650 comments. The questions were then ranked using the LW voting system.

On December 11th, Eliezer filmed his replies to the top questions (skipping some), and sent me the videos on December 22nd. Because voting continued after that date, the order of the top questions in the original thread has changed a bit, but you can find the original question for each video (and the discussion it generated, if any) by following the links below.

Thanks to Eliezer and everybody who participated.

Update: If you prefer to download the videos, they are available here (800 MB, .wmw format, sort the files by 'date created').

Link to question #1.

Link to question #2.

Link to question #3.

Link to question #4.

Eliezer Yudkowsky - Less Wrong Q&A (5/30) from MikeGR on Vimeo.

Link to question #5.

(Video #5 is on Vimeo because Youtube doesn't accept videos longer than 10 minutes and I only found out after uploading about a dozen. I would gladly have put them all on Vimeo, but there's a 500 MB/week upload limit and these videos add up to over 800 MB.)

Link to question #6.

Link to question #7.

Link to question #8.

Link to question #9.

Link to question #10.

Link to question #11.

Link to question #12.

Link to question #13.

Link to question #14.

Link to question #15.

Link to question #16.

Link to question #17.

Link to question #18.

Link to question #19.

Link to question #20.

Link to question #21.

Link to question #22.

Link to question #23.

Link to question #24.

Link to question #25.

Link to question #26.

Link to question #27.

Link to question #28.

Link to question #29.

Link to question #30.

If anything is wrong with the videos or links, let me know in the comments or via private message.
Communicating effectively: form and content
by Morendil — 2010-01-06T09:52:10.657Z

Effective communication techniques, particularly in written communication, are an important part of the aspiring rationalist's toolkit. Alicorn's recent post makes excellent points about niceness, and touches parenthetically on the larger issue of form versus content.

The general claim, when defending either rudeness or poor spelling, is "what matters is the content in what I'm saying, not the form". Well, I suspect this is one of the myths of pure reason. What matters about your content is what you do with it, pragmatically. Are you here to convey ideas to others ? Then you will achieve your aims more effectively if nothing about the form distracts from the content. (That you need to have content goes almost without saying.)
Conscientious programmers are aware that source code is read and modified much more often than it is written. They know that it's harder to debug code than it was to write it in the first place. They invest more effort in making their code readable than a naive programmer might, because they estimate that this effort will be handsomely repaid in future savings.
Conversation is no different. Your intent (in a forum like LW, anyway) is to cause others to ponder certain ideas. It's in your interest to consider the limitations of your interlocutors, their expectations, their attention span, their sensitivity, their bounded rationality, so that the largest possible fraction of your effort goes into delivering the payload, versus dissipating as waste heat. There are more readers than writers, making it rational to spend time and effort working on the form of your message as well as the content.
You even need to keep in mind that people are stateful. That is, they don't just consider the local form you've chosen for your ideas; they also apply heuristics based on past interactions with you.
These considerations apply to more than just "niceness". They apply to any instances where you notice that people fail to take away the intended message from your writings. When people respond to what you write, even with criticism, a downvote or a complaint, they are doing you a service; you can at least use that feedback to improve. Most will simply ignore you, quietly. Given enough feedback, the form your communication will improve, over time.

And I would be quite surprised, given what I know of human minds, if this did not also eventually improve the content ...