trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Link: Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked
by Anders_H — 2016-03-16T19:57:49.294Z

John Ioannidis has written a very insightful and entertaining article about the current state of the movement which calls itself "Evidence-Based Medicine". The paper is available ahead of print at http://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(16)00147-5/pdf.

As far as I can tell there is currently no paywall, that may change later, send me an e-mail if you are unable to access it.

Retractionwatch interviews John about the paper here: http://retractionwatch.com/2016/03/16/evidence-based-medicine-has-been-hijacked-a-confession-from-john-ioannidis/

(Full disclosure: John Ioannidis is a co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), where I am an employee. I am posting this not in an effort to promote METRICS, but because I believe the links will be of interest to the community)
Meetup : London rationalish meetup - 2016-03-20
by philh — 2016-03-16T14:39:40.949Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London rationalish meetup - 2016-03-20

WHEN:
20 March 2016 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE:
Shakespeare's Head, 64-68 Kingsway, London WC2B 6AH

I'm late posting the event this week, but that's because I was distracted, not because it isn't happening.

This meetup will be social discussion in a pub, with no set topic. If there's a topic you want to talk about, feel free to bring it.

The pub is the Shakespeare's Head in Holborn. There will be some way to identify us.

The event on facebook is visible even if you don't have a facebook account. Any last-minute updates will go there.

We're a fortnightly London-based meetup for members of the rationalist diaspora. The diaspora includes, but is not limited to, LessWrong, Slate Star Codex, rationalist tumblrsphere, and parts of the Effective Altruism movement.

You don't have to identify as a rationalist to attend: basically, if you think we seem like interesting people you'd like to hang out with, welcome! You are invited. You do not need to think you are clever enough, or interesting enough, or similar enough to the rest of us, to attend. You are invited.

People start showing up around two, and there are almost always people around until after six, but feel free to come and go at whatever time.

Discussion article for the meetup : London rationalish meetup - 2016-03-20
How I infiltrated the Raëlians (and was hugged by their leader)
by SquirrelInHell — 2016-03-16T05:45:03.387Z

I was invited by a stranger I met on a plane and actually went to a meeting of Raëlians (known in some LW circles as "the flying saucer cult") in 沖縄, Japan. It was right next to Claude Vorilhon's home, and he came himself for the "ceremony" (?) dressed in a theatrical space-y white uniform, complete with a Jewish-style white cap on his head. When saying his "sermon" (?) he spoke in English and his words were translated into Japanese for the benefit of those who didn't understand. And yes, it's true he talked with me briefly and then hugged me (I understand he does this with all newcomers, and it felt 100% fake to me). I then went on to eat lunch in an 居酒屋 with a group of around 15 members, who were all really friendly and pleasant people. I was actually treated to lunch by them, and afterwards someone gave me a ~20 minute ride to the town I wanted to be in, despite knowing they won't see me ever again.

If you have ever wondered how it is possible that a flying saucer cult has more members than EA, now it's time to learn something.

Note: I hope it's clear that I do not endorse creating cults, nor do I proclaim the EA community's inferiority. It hasn't even crossed my mind when I wrote the above line that any LW'er would take it as a stab they need to defend against. I'm merely pointing to the fact that we can learn from anything, whether it's good or bad, and encouraging a fresh discussion on this after I gathered some new data.

Let's do this as a Q&A session (I'm at work now so I can't write a long post).

Please ask questions in comments.
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Board Games
by maia — 2016-03-16T02:01:03.053Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Board Games

WHEN:
21 March 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1597 Howard St., San Francisco

We'll be meeting up to hang out and play board games!

Roger and I will be out of town this week, so Anton and Jacob are hosting. This week, call 9784603399 if you need help getting in.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Board Games
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Game Theory
by RobinZ — 2016-03-16T01:40:31.384Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Game Theory

WHEN:
20 March 2016 03:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Reynolds Center

We will be meeting in the courtyard to talk about game theory - a mathematical field looking at strategies for games where the outcome of your moves depends on what other players moves were.

As always, side conversations are permitted and encouraged.

Upcoming meetups:

Mar. 27: Singing

Apr. 3: Fun & Games

Apr. 10: Cherry Blossoms

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Game Theory
Newsjacking for Rationality and Effective Altruism
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2016-03-15T21:58:23.781Z

Summary: This post describes the steps I took to newsjack a breaking story to promote Rationality and Effective Altruism ideas in an op-ed piece, so that anyone can take similar steps to newsjack a relevant story.

Introduction

Newsjacking is the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story. It should be done as early as possible in the life cycle of a news story for maximum impact for drawing people's attention to your ideas.

Some of you may have heard about the Wounded Warrior Project scandal that came to light five days ago or so. This nonprofit that helps wounded veterans had fired its top staff for excessively lavish spending and building Potemkin village-style programs that were showpieces for marketing but did little to help wounded veterans.

I scan the news regularly, and was lucky enough to see the story as it was just breaking, on the evening of March 10th. I decided to try to newsjack this story for the sake of Rationality and Effective Altruist ideas. With the help of some timely editing by EA and Rationality enthusiasts other than myself - props to Agnes Vishnevkin, Max Harms, Chase Roycraft, Rhema Hokama, Jacob Bryan, and Yaacov Tarko - TIME just published my piece. This is a big deal, as now one of the first news stories people see when they type "wounded warrior" into Google, as you can see from the screenshot below, is a story promoting Rationality and EA-themed ideas. Regarding Rationality proper, I talk about horns effect and scope neglect, citing Eliezer's piece on it in the post itself, probably the first link to Less Wrong from TIME. Regarding EA, I talked about about effective giving, and also EA organizations such as GiveWell, The Life You Can Save, Animal Charity Evaluators, and effective direct-action charities such as Against Malaria Foundation and GiveDirectly. Many people are searching for "wounded warrior" now that the scandal is emerging, and are getting exposure to Rationality and EA ideas.

Newsjacking a story like this and getting published in TIME may seem difficult, but it's doable. I hope that the story of how I did it and the steps I lay out, as well as the template of the actual article I wrote, will encourage you to try to do so yourself.

Specific Steps

1) The first step is to be prepared mentally to newsjack a story and be vigilant about scanning the headl...
Meetup : Rationality Vienna Meetup
by AnnaLeptikon — 2016-03-15T19:11:18.904Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Vienna Meetup

WHEN:
16 April 2016 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Kaisermühlenstraße 24, Vienna

Location:
(often depicted wrong, come to U2 Stadlau)

Event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1688124771426353/

Topic:
room for open microphone
(means collecting topics in the beginning and then voting on preferences and order, means that also you can prepare some short talk or discussion!)
or the proposal of a full/long lecture

Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Vienna Meetup
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group Debugging
by maia — 2016-03-14T14:37:08.516Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group Debugging

WHEN:
14 March 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
1597 Howard St., San Francisco, CA

We'll be meeting to try and solve each other's problems! As usual, call 301-458-0764 to be let in.

(Yes, this is today.)

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Group Debugging
Open thread, Mar. 14 - Mar. 20, 2016
by MrMind — 2016-03-14T08:02:53.240Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
The Thyroid Madness : Core Argument, Evidence, Probabilities and Predictions
by johnlawrenceaspden — 2016-03-14T01:41:35.900Z

I've made a couple of recent posts about hypothyroidism:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/nbm/thyroid_hormones_chronic_fatigue_and_fibromyalgia/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/n8u/a_medical_mystery_thyroid_hormones_chronic/
It appears that many of those who read them were unable to extract the core argument, and few people seem to have found them interesting.
They seem extremely important to me. Somewhere between a possible palliative for some cases of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and a panacea for most of the remaining unexplained diseases of the world.
So here I've made the core argument as plain as I can. But obviously it misses out many details. Please read the original posts to see what I'm really saying. They were written as I thought, and the idea has crystallised somewhat in the process of arguing about it with friends and contributors to Less Wrong. In particular I am indebted to the late Broda Barnes for the connection with diabetes, which I found in his book 'Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness', and which makes the whole thing look rather more plausible.

CORE ARGUMENT
(1.1) Hypothyroidism is a disease with very variable symptoms, which can present in many different ways.
It is an endocrine hormone disease, which causes the metabolism to run slow. A sort of general systems failure. Which parts fail first seems random.
It is extraordinarily difficult to diagnose by clinical symptoms.
(1.2) Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia look very like possible presentations of Hypothyroidism
(1.3) The most commonly used blood test (TSH) for Hypothyroidism is negative in CFS/FMS
=>
EITHER
(2.1) CFS/FMS/Hypothyroidism are extremely similar diseases which are nevertheless differently caused.
OR
(2.2) The blood test is failing to detect many cases of Hypothyroidism.

It seems that one is either forced to accept (2.1), or to believe that blood hormone levels can be normal in the presence of Hypothyroidism.
There is precedent for this:
Diabetes, another endocrine disorder (this time the hormone is insulin), comes in two forms:
type I : the hormone producing gland is damaged, the blood hormone levels go wrong. (Classical Diabetes)
type II: the blood hormone levels are normal, but for some reason the hormone does not act. (Insulin Resistance)
I therefore hypothesize:
(3) That there is at least one mechanism interfering with the action of the thyr...
Look for Lone Correct Contrarians
by Gram_Stone — 2016-03-13T16:11:55.327Z

Related to: The Correct Contrarian Cluster, The General Factor of Correctness

(Content note: Explicitly about spreading rationalist memes, increasing the size of the rationalist movement, and proselytizing. I also regularly use the word 'we' to refer to the rationalist community/subculture. You might prefer not to read this if you don't like that sort of thing and/or you don't think I'm qualified to write about that sort of thing and/or you're not interested in providing constructive criticism.)

I've tried to introduce a number of people to this culture and the ideas within it, but it takes some finesse to get a random individual from the world population to keep thinking about these things and apply them. My personal efforts have been very hit-or-miss. Others have told me that they've been more successful. But I think there are many people that share my experience. This is unfortunate: we want people to be more rational and we want more rational people.

At any rate, this is not about the art of raising the sanity waterline, but the more general task of spreading rationalist memes. Some people naturally arrive at these ideas, but they usually have to find them through other people first. This is really about all of the people in the world who are like you probably were before you found this culture; the people who would care about it, and invest in it, as it is right now, if only they knew it existed.

I'm going to be vague for the sake of anonymity, but here it goes:

I was reading a book review on Amazon, and I really liked it. The writer felt like a kindred spirit. I immediately saw that they were capable of coming to non-obvious conclusions, so I kept reading. Then I checked their review history in the hope that I would find other good books and reviews. And it was very strange.

They did a bunch of stuff that very few humans do. They realized that nuclear power has risks but that the benefits heavily outweigh the risks given the appropriate alternative, and they realized that humans overestimate the risks of nuclear power for silly reasons. They noticed when people were getting confused about labels and pointed out the general mistake, as well as pointing out what everyone should really be talking about. They acknowledged individual and average IQ differences and realized the correct policy implications. They really understood evolution, they took evolution...
Prediction challenge: Zika and birth rates
by NancyLebovitz — 2016-03-12T16:55:34.631Z

I've been wondering about good new topics for LW, and prediction might be one of them.
The effect of the Zika virus-- and human reactions to it-- on birth rates has the combination of being hard enough to be interesting, not being heavily plowed over by partisans, and having a quantitative outcome.

There's a lot of evidence that Zika causes microcephaly, but this isn't confirmed. There's also some reason to think it increases the rate of miscarriages.
Human reactions cover a wide range, including trying to wipe out the mosquitoes, increasing access to birth control, abortions, asking people to put off having children, creating a less-mosquito-friendly environment....
My assumption is that zika will cease to be a serious problem in not too many years, as more women get the disease and acquire immunity before their child-bearing years, but admittedly, this is assuming that zika (or some other disease with a similar infection pattern) is the problem.
Any other good prediction questions?
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2016-03-11T16:18:06.217Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on March 11th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Ann Arbor Meetup - Meditation: 19 March 2016 06:00PM
European Community Weekend: 02 September 2016 03:35PM

The remaining 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:

New Hampshire Meetup: 22 March 2016 06:00PM
Moscow meetup: Aristotle project, reference class practice, order team meeting: 13 March 2016 02:00PM
Vienna: 12 March 2016 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Fun & Games: 13 March 2016 02:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Canberra, Columbus, Denver, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New Hampshire, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, 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 when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Cambridge UK, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Portland, Salt Lake City, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), Singapore, St. Louis, Vancouver, Warsaw, ...
Virtual models of virtual AIs in virtual worlds
by Stuart_Armstrong — 2016-03-11T09:41:07.000Z

A putative new idea for AI control; index here.

This is a reworking of the previous models of AIs in virtual worlds, done after discussing the idea with Jessica.

The basic idea is that there are a lot of concepts about AI security - such as sealed boxes, Cartesian boundaries, and so on - that are only partially true. They are simplified models, abstractions, and, even if they are true in our model of physics (an absurdly optimistic claim) there's always the possibility (certainty) that our models are wrong or incomplete.

But there is one place where models are exactly true, and that... within the model itself. And a computer program, or a virtual machine, is a model, a model we try and make happen exactly in the real world.

Is my world model true?

Consider an AI, running inside a virtual machine. The AI has an internal model of the entire virtual machine, including itself, and knows the rules of the virtual machine/model.

In fact the AI entertains two hypotheses:

H1: the model is entirely correct about the (virtual) world.

H2: sometimes, random bits are flipped in the (virtual) world.

Then give the AI some utility function u, between 0 and 1, defined over the virtual world. The AI also has a shutdown button B that it predicts will shut down the world; this B send a signal to us and will stop the execution of the virtual world, AI included. Let r be some discount factor close to 1, and TB the time step at which B was pressed (if it was). Then the AI tries to maximise the utility

u∗=rTB((u|H1)+(2|H2))

Now the AI is motivated to maximise u as long as it thinks that the world model it has is correct, and to press B as soon as it feels its ache. But as soon as it suspects enough that the model of the virtual world is is incorrect - ie H2 - it will press B (the exact definition of u∗ could probably be improved; the might be unfortunate trade-offs at the moment).

What does H2 translate to from our perspective? Well, the only thing that can cause "random bit flips" in the virtual world is if the model of that world is if the program is not running correctly: if our real world is somehow interfering with the program. Therefore this AI is motivated to turn itself off as soon as it detects real-world influence in its model. This includes its self-model: if it finds itself developing unusual abilities not explainable within the world model, it will increase the prob

...
Meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup
by Tuk — 2016-03-10T23:34:47.096Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup

WHEN:
22 March 2016 06:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
269 Pearl St Manchester NH 03104

The fifteenth NH meet-up is Tuesday, 3/22, in Manchester, NH at 7 pm at a private residence. Light refreshments will be provided.

Have you read Rationality: from AI to Zombies, or any of the Sequences on Less Wrong? Maybe you're just a fan of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Come hang out with us and discuss optimization of whatever it is you want to optimize.

Agenda: See discussion on Facebook

You may want to bring a notebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/562926627205401/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/695201067251306/

Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong NH Meetup
After Go, what games should be next for DeepMind?
by InquilineKea — 2016-03-10T20:49:06.507Z

So chess and Go are both games of perfect information. How important is it for the next game that DeepMind is trained on to be a game of perfect information?

How would the AI perform on generalized versions of both chess and Go? What about games like poker and Magic the Gathering?

How realistic do you think it's possible to train DeepMind on games of perfect information (full-map-reveal) against top-ranked players on games like Starcraft, AOE2, Civ, Sins of a Solar Empire, Command and Conquer, and Total War, for example? (in all possible map settings, including ones people don't frequently play at - e.g. start at "high resource" levels). How important is it for the AI to have a diverse set/library of user-created replays to test itself against, for example?

I'm also thinking... Shitty AI has always held back both RTS and TBS games.. Is it possible that we're only a few years away from non-shitty AI in all RTS and TBS games? Or is the AI in many of these games too hard-coded in to actually matter? (e.g. I know some people who develop AI for AOE2, and there are issues with AI behavior in the game being hard-coded in - e.g. villagers deleting the building they're building if you simply attack them).