trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Article idea: Good argumentation
by Ezekiel — 2011-11-27T19:57:37.899Z

I'm newly subscribed but looking to contribute, and I was wondering if anyone would be interested in an article (or series thereof) teaching, in a formal and well-defined manner, how to argue. It would cover things like:

The general outline for a compelling argument;

How to systematically construct a sound deduction from premise to conclusion;

How to properly substantiate (that is, bring examples and illustrations for) a point;

How to notice an unsound argument;

How to define and point out the flaws once you do;

Et cetera.

There are two reasons why I think such an article might be helpful for this community: Firstly because having learned those skills you could apply them in the privacy of your own head, both to your own arguments and those of others, which in my experience gives a huge boost to critical thinking ability. Secondly because I think most of this community would like to actually make the world a saner place, and those skills are really handy when trying to explain to some intelligent-but-uninitiated schlub why a given silly belief or deduction is in fact silly, or conversely why any of the tools of rationality we use here are in fact rational. It's not magic, but it helps.

It might also improve the level of discourse on the site, of course, but frankly the level of actual argument here is really high in comparison to that of most real-world forums (let alone most Internet forums), and I'd guess with about .75 certainty that nothing I could teach would make it noticeably "better" (a higher growth rate for the function describing the probability of reaching truth as dependent on resources spent arguing). But at the moment I'm inclined to attribute that to the kind of people doing the arguing, rather than the training they have.

And yes, I've noticed articles here that touch on the subject, like Yudkowsky's on inferential distances or language, but I haven't seen anyone having the hubris to try and cover the entire subject in broad strokes. Hubris is a personal speciality of mine.

If this would be helpful, and particularly if there's anything you feel should fall under this heading that I missed in the above list, please say so. If you don't think such an article would be helpful, also please say so. Two reasons I've considered for why that might be the case:

It's irrelevant - most LWers know it already, or i

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[LINK] SMBC on Confirmation Bias
by Lapsed_Lurker — 2011-11-27T15:57:13.142Z

The latest SMBC made me laugh a bit, so I thought I'd bring extra LessWrong attention to it.

I don't know if pointing out the subject of the comic in advance will make it more or less funny. Knowing that might be more data regarding that recent study claiming that spoilers don't actually spoil stuff...
Against WBE (Whole Brain Emulation)
by Curiouskid — 2011-11-27T14:42:54.376Z

problem: I've read arguments for WBE, but I can't find any against.
Most people agree that WBE is the first step to FAI (EDIT: I mean to say that if we were going to try to build AGI in the safest way possible, WBE would be the first step. I did not mean to imply that I thought WBE would come before AGI). I've read a significant portion of Bostrom's WBE roadmap. My question is, are there any good arguments against the feasibility of WBE? A quick google search did not turn up anything other than

This video. Given that many people consider the scenario in which WBE comes before AGI, to be safer than the converse, shouldn't we be talking about this more? What probability do you guys assign to the likelihood that WBE comes before AGI?

Bostrom's WBE roadmap details what technological advancement is needed to get towards WBE:

Different required technologies have different support and drivers for development. Computers are developed independently of any emulation goal, driven by mass market forces and the need for special high performance hardware. Moore’s law and related exponential trends appear likely to continue some distance into the future, and the feedback loops powering them are unlikely to rapidly disappear (see further discussion in Appendix B: Computer Performance Development). There is independent (and often sizeable) investment into computer games, virtual reality, physics simulation and medical simulations. Like computers, these fields produce their own revenue streams and do not require WBE‐specific or scientific encouragement.

A large number of the other technologies, such as microscopy, image processing, and computational neuroscience are driven by research and niche applications. This means less funding, more variability of the funding, and dependence on smaller groups developing them. Scanning technologies are tied to how much money there is in research (including brain emulation research) unless medical or other applications can be found. Validation techniques are not widely used in neuroscience yet, but could (and should) become standard as systems biology becomes more common and widely applied.

Finally there are a few areas relatively specific to WBE: large‐scale neuroscience, ph

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Drinking to lower standards?
by KatjaGrace — 2011-11-27T07:40:25.000Z

One way to be more satisfied with life is to lower your standards. People seem pretty hesitant to do this most of the time. And fair enough: who wants to be satisfied at the expense of everything else they care about? Happiness isn’t that great.

If only it were possible to feel like you had lower standards without actually settling for the very easiest career that would pay for your tent, noodles, and blow up companion.

I wonder if this is a significant reason people drink alcohol.

It seems that when people drink they lower their standards for many things. For what to laugh at, for what’s worth saying, and for who it’s worth saying to, for instance. They enthusiastically eat things they would find barely passable sober, and are thrilled by activities they usually find beneath them.

Yet this standard lowering is constrained in time, so as long as you don’t become permanently intoxicated you can spend most of your days having high standards. And since there was a specific identifiable reason for your low standards (even if purely social), it need not contaminate your image as a discerning person. At least not as much.

Is this an actual common point of drinking, or just a side effect? I don’t know – I don’t drink enough, and apparently this isn’t considered a good topic of party conversation. Maybe my observation is wrong, and people raise their standards in some ways when they drink, for instance coming to want more socializing than they do the rest of the time. I’m not sure about that. It’s also not clear why choosing to drink when you are sober wouldn’t count as having low standards at that point. But people are regularly forgiven for things they do while drunk, so it seems we generally don’t hold people so responsible for such indirect decisions.
AI reflection problem 
by  — 2011-11-27T06:29:42.211Z

I tried to write down my idea a few times, but it was badly wrong each time. Now, Instead of solving the problem, I'm just going to give a more conservative summary of what the problem is.

-

Eliezer's talk at the 2011 Singularity Summit focused largely on the AI reflection problem (how to build AI that can prove things about its own proofs, and execute self modifications on the basis of those proofs, without thereby reducing its self modification mojo). To that end, it would be nice to have a "reflection principle" by which an AI (or its theorem prover) can know in a self-referential way that its theorem proving activities are working as they should.

The naive way to do this is to use the standard provability predicate, ◻, which can be thought of as asking whether a proof of a given formula exists. Using this we can try to formalize our intuition that a fully reflective AI, one that can reason about itself in order to improve itself, should understand that its proof deriving behavior does in fact produce sentences derivable from its axioms:

AI ⊢ ◻P → P,

which is intended to be read as "The formal system "AI" understand in general that "If a sentence is provable then it is true" ", though literally it means something a bit more like "It is derivable from the formal system "AI" that "if there exists a proof of sentence P, then P", in general for P".

Surprisingly, attempting to add this to a formal system, like Peano Arithmetic, doesn't work so well. In particular, it was shown by Löb that adding this reflection principle in general lets us derive any statement, including contradictions.

So our nice reflection principle is broken. We don't understand reflective reasoning as well as we'd like. At this point, we can brainstorm some new reflection principles: Maybe our reflection principles should be derivable within our formal system, instead of being tacked on. Also, we can try to figure out in a deeper way why "AI ⊢ ◻P → P" doesn't work: If we can derive all sentences, does that mean that proofs of contradictions actually do exist? If so, why weren't those proofs breaking our theorem provers before we added the reflection principle? Or do the proofs for all sentences only exist for the augmented theorem prover, not for the initial formal system? That would suggest our reflection principle is allowing the AI to trust itself too much, allowing it t...
[SEQ RERUN] Guardians of Ayn Rand
by MinibearRex — 2011-11-27T05:12:27.899Z

Today's post, Guardians of Ayn Rand was originally published on 18 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Ayn Rand, the leader of the Objectivists, praised reason and rationality. The group she created became a cult. Praising rationality does not provide immunity to the human trend towards cultishness.

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 Guardians of the Gene Pool, 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] Scientists create mammalian H5N1
by Oligopsony — 2011-11-26T20:00:49.011Z

I'm woefully underinformed on this topic, but this doesn't seem good at all:

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS—Locked up in the bowels of the medical faculty building here and accessible to only a handful of scientists lies a man-made flu virus that could change world history if it were ever set free.

The virus is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that has been genetically altered and is now easily transmissible between ferrets, the animals that most closely mimic the human response to flu. Scientists believe it's likely that the pathogen, if it emerged in nature or were released, would trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with many millions of deaths.

In a 17th floor office in the same building, virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center calmly explains why his team created what he says is "probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make"—and why he wants to publish a paper describing how they did it. Fouchier is also bracing for a media storm. After he talked toScienceInsider yesterday, he had an appointment with an institutional press officer to chart a communication strategy.

Fouchier's paper is one of two studies that have triggered an intense debate about the limits of scientific freedom and that could portend changes in the way U.S. researchers handle so-called dual-use research: studies that have a potential public health benefit but could also be useful for nefarious purposes like biowarfare or bioterrorism.

The other study—also on H5N1, and with comparable results—was done by a team led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Tokyo, several scientists toldScienceInsider. (Kawaoka did not respond to interview requests.) Both studies have been submitted for publication, and both are currently under review by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which on a few previous occasions has been asked by scientists or journals to review papers that caused worries.

NSABB chair Paul Keim, a microbial geneticist, says he cannot discuss specific studies but confirms that the board has "worked very hard and very intensely for several weeks on studies about H5N1 transmissibility in mammals." The group plans to issue a public statement soon, says Keim, and is likely to issue additional recommendations about this type of research. "We'll have a lot to

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Meetup : Austin, TX
by Vaniver — 2011-11-26T16:45:51.965Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX

WHEN:
26 November 2011 01:30:00PM (-0600)

WHERE:
2222B Guadalupe St Austin, Texas 78705

The Austin meetup is back to its Caffe Medici location. We sit on the second floor to the left, near (or often on) the stage. (Sorry about how late this is; I got derailed by Thanksgiving.)

Discussion article for the meetup : Austin, TX
Welcome to LessWrong (For highschoolers)
by Curiouskid — 2011-11-26T15:47:26.872Z

As a continuation of the original Welcome thread (if you haven't gone there, go there fist) I think we need a separate introduction thread for highschoolers.

Who: As a demographic, I think that we can probably be characterized by:

1. Our newness to LW.
2. Our uncertainty about which college or career to choose.
3. (if we are in a public school) Looking for ways to game the system (because we're not learning much in it).
4. Our potential to make a huge impact (the best advantage is an early start).
5. An lack of face to face interaction with intellectual people.
Why: I can think of several things this could help highschoolers with.
1. See where you stack up compared to others your age (We're probably all big fish in small ponds. At least I am. Let's get an idea of what the big pond is like).
2. Make friends with people like you.
3. Consider college and career ideas you hadn't considered before.
4. Perhaps find people to apply with for the Thiel Fellowship.
5. Find a chavruta to go through the sequences with you.

What: Tell us the following:

1. How old/what year are you?
2. How have you tried to enhance your education beyond what's normally offered at schools?
3. How many rationalist/philosophical people are at your school/family?
4. What careers/schools are you considering?
5. Are you going to apply for a Thiel Fellowship?
6. EDIT: link to your old "introduce yourself" post.
If you're not in highschool, tell us what you would have told your old highschool self.
Facing the Intelligence Explosion discussion page
by lukeprog — 2011-11-26T08:05:33.067Z

I've created a new website for my ebook Facing the Intelligence Explosion:

Sometime this century, machines will surpass human levels of intelligence and ability, and the human era will be over. This will be the most important event in Earth’s history, and navigating it wisely may be the most important thing we can ever do.

Luminaries from Alan Turing and Jack Good to Bill Joy and Stephen Hawking have warned us about this. Why do I think they’re right, and what can we do about it?

Facing the Intelligence Explosion is my attempt to answer those questions.

This page is the dedicated discussion page for Facing the Intelligence Explosion.

If you'd like to comment on a particular chapter, please give the chapter name at top of your comment so that others can more easily understand your comment. For example:

Re: From Skepticism to Technical Rationality

Here, Luke neglects to mention that...
Video: Skepticon talks
by komponisto — 2011-11-26T07:23:57.551Z

The talks from Skepticon IV are being posted to YouTube.

So far we have:

Richard Carrier on Bayes (my favorite)

Julia Galef on the Straw Vulcan

Greta Christina on angry atheists

Hermant Mehta on math education

David Fitzgerald on Mormonism

J.T. Eberhard on mental illness (a dramatic end to the conference)

an "atheist revival" by Sam Singleton (on the lighter side)

ADDED:

"Death Panel" featuring Julia Galef, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Greta Christina, and James Croft

Darrel Ray on secularism and sex

Eliezer Yudkowsky on heuristics and biases (really more like a crash course in the core LW sequences)

Joe Nickell on paranormal investigations (I missed this at the conference; and even more regrettably, missed the chance to ask Joe Nickell what he thinks of many-worlds.)

Jen McCreight on "skeptical genetics" (the other talk I missed)

Rebecca Watson on the religious right

Spencer Greenberg on self-skepticism

Dan Barker on atheist clergy

More to come soon, hopefully...
Let's Make an Open Problems Page
by Ron_Fern — 2011-11-26T07:13:39.993Z

It's simple enough of a proposal. Make a page where we post open problems, work on solutions to said problems, and where we can discuss these problems prior to attempting to solve them with other LWers. I would suggest two main parts:

Lesswrong specific/original problems, i.e., problems posed by LWers, or which are particularly relevant to LW style rationality.

General problems which we believe LWers should have the tools to solve, but which have not been solved.

I would propose using the same karma system we use now. Each problem could have a long list of proposed solutions, cautionary comments, and newly found lemmas relevant to the problem, and each solution, warning, or lemma, could have its own comment tree section. But it is important that we don't think of solutions as articles; they should be scientific writing. No sentence or phrase should be in a solution without adding to the literal meaning of the solution. We should judge solutions based on how well they solve the problem, not on how well written they are. We might even want to make chat rooms devoted to each problem, so that we can actively engage in conversation in stead of waiting for comment responses.

This would have at least three major benefits:

We would have a place for LW students to actually practice their skills on fresh problems without putting them through the less effective torture of already solved, homework-like tasks.

We would have a large record of our successes and failures as rationalists, and an easy way to get a sense of how far we've come since 2011.

This would provide us with a way to test the results of LW style rationality training/study by looking at who has been giving the best solutions. If we find that after a few years of being on LW, 50% of LWers give a really good solution to one of the open problems, then we can conclude that reading/using LW has had positive effects on the rationality of its readers/users.
Intelligence Explosion analysis draft: From digital intelligence to intelligence explosion
by lukeprog — 2011-11-26T06:30:25.217Z

Again, I invite your feedback on this snippet from an intelligence explosion analysis Anna Salamon and myself have been working on. This section is less complete than the others; missing text is indicated with brackets: [].

_____

From digital intelligence to intelligence explosion

Humans are the first terrestrial intelligences sophisticated enough to produce a technological civilization. It seems unlikely that we are near the ceiling of possible intelligences, rather than simply being the first such intelligence that happened to evolve. Computers far outperform humans in many narrow niches, and there is reason to believe that similar large improvements over human performance are possible for general reasoning, technology design, and other tasks of interest.

Below, we discuss the advantages of digital intelligence that will likely produce an intelligence explosion, along with the nature and speed of this “takeoff.”

Advantages from mere digitality

One might think the first human-level digital intelligence would not affect the world much. After all, we have seven billion human-level intelligences right now, and few or none of them have prompted massive, sudden AI breakthroughs. A single added intelligence might seem to be a tiny portion of the total drivers of technological innovation.

But while human-level humans do not suddenly lead to smarter AI, there are reasons to expect human-level digital intelligence to enable faster change. Digital intelligences can be ported across hardware platforms, and this has at least three significant consequences: speed, copyability, and goal coordination.

Speed

Axons carry spike signals at 75 meters per second or less (Kandel et al. 2000). That speed is a fixed consequence of the type of physiology we humans run on. In contrast, software minds could be ported to any available hardware, and could therefore think more rapidly as faster hardware became available. This is analogous to the way in which older video game systems can be emulated on (much faster) modern computers.

Thus, if digital intelligence is invented that can think as fast as a human can, faster hardware would enable that same digital intelligence to think faster than a human. The speed of human thought would not be a stable resting place; it would be just one speed among many at which the digital intelligence could be run

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'Next post' and 'Previous post' links for posts in a sequence
by lukeprog — 2011-11-26T06:09:41.382Z

Less Wrong would be stickier if there were links at the bottom of each post in The Sequences to the next and previous posts in that sequence.

I just added those links for each post in my own sequences: The Science of Winning at Life, Rationality and Philosophy, and No-Nonsense Metaethics.

I can't do that for sequences written by somebody else. Perhaps one or more of the LW editors would be willing to start hacking away on that project?

Here's the algorithm I executed:

Open all the posts from one sequence, in order, in browser tabs.

Go to first post in the sequence.

Click 'Edit'.

Click 'HTML' and uncheck 'Word Wrap.'

Scroll to the bottom of the post (not counting notes and references) and paste in the following:

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p align="right">Next post: <a href=""></a></p>
<p align="right">Previous post: <a href=""></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

If post is first in sequence, remove 'Previous post' line.

If post is last in sequence, remove 'Next post' line.

Paste in URL and post title for remaining 'Next post' or 'Previous post' lines of HTML.

Click 'Update', then click 'Submit'.

If this is the last post in the sequence, return 0. Else, move to next post in sequence and go to step #3.
[SEQ RERUN] Guardians of the Gene Pool
by MinibearRex — 2011-11-26T06:02:39.355Z

Today's post, Guardians of the Gene Pool was originally published on 16 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

It is a common misconception that the Nazis wanted their eugenics program to create a new breed of supermen. In fact, they wanted to breed back to the archetypal Nordic man. They located their ideals in the past, which is a counterintuitive idea for many of us.

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 Guardians of the Truth, 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.