trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[link] Interview with Anders Sandberg on how to make a difference through research and how to choose a research topic
by Pablo — 2012-12-01T18:25:01.174Z

Here. Some excerpts:

What do you think are some good heuristics for doing high impact research?

One idea is to go for under-researched fields. Progress in a field is typically a very convex learning curve: rapid progress at first when the low-hanging fruits get picked by the pioneers, followed by slowing progress as the problems get harder and it takes longer to learn the necessary skills to get to them. So the same amount of effort might produce far more progress in a little studied field than in a big one. [...]

It can also help to turn the question around: what aspects of human life matter? Looking at human life, we sleep about a third of the time, and there’s very little research into how to enhance sleep. Understanding the health effects of what we eat is probably worth billions of pounds per year. But there are no financial incentives here. Maybe a simple approach for finding high impact research areas might be to look at the most common google searches: you can get a pretty good idea of what human behaviour matters a lot!

Do you think it’s better to be a generalist and get a broad understanding of a lot of things, or to specialise early and really focus on a single area you think is high impact?

Over the history of my academic career my most useful courses have been linear algebra, all the statistics and probability theory I’ve been able to pick up, some basic computer science, and a course on natural disasters. [...]

Even if you do focus on one field, knowing enough about other fields is good as you can recognise when you need the help of someone from another department.

What other barriers are there to doing important research?

Looking at some of these under-researched fields, the problem is that a lot of them don’t even exist as fields. Typically you’re unlikely to get funding in unknown fields as well: unless you’re a really good salesman! So one heuristic would be to look at the topics you know, do a matrix and look at the interactions: which areas do you see that have nobody doing anything in?

When I went to a computational neuroscience conference last year, I was slightly depressed as I saw a poster which was exactly the same research topic as my last poster! It was pretty clear the young grad student had reached the same conclusion I did, and had never heard of my research which was published 6 years ago! Man

...
[SEQ RERUN] Stuck In Throat
by MinibearRex — 2012-12-01T00:12:43.418Z

Today's post, Stuck In Throat was originally published on November 30, 2008. A summary:

A new attempt to summarize Yudkowsky's position, and what parts of that position Hanson thinks are unsupported.

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 Singletons Rule OK, 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.
Meetup : First Purdue Meetup
by Curiouskid — 2012-11-30T23:50:53.116Z

Discussion article for the meetup : First Purdue Meetup

WHEN:
11 January 2013 06:50:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Purdue University - HICKS library

Several times, I've tried to get a meetup started at Purdue. However, each time I post on LW that there might be a meetup if enough people comment and say that they want a meetup, only 3ish people will even comment. However, I know that there are at least 8 people at Purdue who read LessWrong, so I've decided to leave this meetup up on the site for a long time so that people on the site will see it.
I'm not planning on actually having the meetup until after winter break.

EDIT: First meetup went well. Second meetup page here (http://lesswrong.com/meetups/hx).

Discussion article for the meetup : First Purdue Meetup
Meetup : Durham HPMoR Discussion, chapters 18-20
by evand — 2012-11-30T17:16:21.069Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham HPMoR Discussion, chapters 18-20

WHEN:
01 December 2012 11:00:00AM (-0500)

WHERE:
Guglhupf bakery, 2706 durham-chapel hill blvd. suite #1 durham, NC

We will be meeting to discuss Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapters 18-20 (~56 pages). Please come, even if you haven't done all (or any) of the reading!

Nominal meeting time is 11-1; there is likely to be continued informal discussion after, possibly including Zendo.

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham HPMoR Discussion, chapters 18-20
Weekly LW Meetups: Austin, Brussels, Montreal, Pittsburgh, St. Louis
by FrankAdamek — 2012-11-30T17:06:17.804Z

This summary was posted to LW main on Nov 23rd. The following week's summary post is here.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

Brussels meetup: 24 November 2012 01:00PM
(St. Louis MO) Psycology of memorization, Thiel Fellow James Koppel, and games: 24 November 2012 02:30PM
LessWrong Montreal - Advanced Epistemology 101: 26 November 2012 06:30PM
Pittsburgh: affecting the far future: 28 November 2012 06:00PM
Berlin Meetup: 01 December 2012 07:30PM
First meetup in Innsbruck : 02 December 2012 03:00PM
Atlanta - Practical Rationality Meetup Session: 02 December 2012 05:00PM
Meetup : Bielefeld Meetup, December 5th: 05 December 2012 07:00PM
Sofia, Bulgaria Meetup: 09 December 2012 05:00PM

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

Austin, TX: 24 November 2018 01:30PM
Melbourne, practical rationality: 07 December 2012 07:00PM
Winter Solstice Megameetup - NYC: 15 December 2012 05:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Oxford, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles.

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 will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be 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, Berlin, Chica...
Meetup : Cambridge, MA first-Sunday meetup
by jimrandomh — 2012-11-30T16:34:04.249Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA first-Sunday meetup

WHEN:
02 December 2012 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
25 Ames St Cambridge, MA 02139

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [25 Ames St, Bldg 66], room 148.

Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge, MA first-Sunday meetup
New WBE implementation
by Louie — 2012-11-30T11:16:27.096Z

It usually isn't profitable to pay attention to science news, since science journalists largely misintrepret new "breakthroughs". But I am somewhat interested in this story about "artificial brains" coming out of Canada.

Most large neuron simulations I've read about before don't actually do anything. But apparently there's a somewhat large new WBE implementation at the University of Waterloo that performs sub-humanly on several tasks while having similar weaknesses to human brains.

Curious what others think of this recent development.
[SEQ RERUN] Singletons Rule OK
by MinibearRex — 2012-11-30T06:57:54.000Z

Today's post, Singletons Rule OK was originally published on 30 November 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

It is possible to create a singleton that won't do nasty things. This may be preferable to a scenario in which many agents start competing for resources without any way of securing themselves other than constant defense and deterrence.

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 Total Tech Wars, 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.
One thousand tips do not make a system
by  — 2012-11-30T05:38:50.159Z

So, I've been thinking. We ought to have a system for rationality. What do I mean?

Well, consider a real-time strategy game like Starcraft II. One of the most important things to do in SC2 is macromanagement: making sure that your resources are all being used sensibly. Now, macromanagement could be learned as a big, long list of tips. Like this:

Try to mine minerals.

Recruit lots of soldiers.

Recruit lots of workers.

It's a good idea for a mineral site to have between 22 and 30 workers.

Workers are recruited at a command center.

Soldiers are recruited at a barracks.

In order to build anything, you need workers.

In order to build anything, you also need minerals.

For that matter, in order to recruit more units, you need minerals.

Workers mine minerals.

Minerals should be used immediately; if you're storing them, you're wasting them.

(Of course, the above tips only work for Terrans.)

Okay, great. Now you have a command center and a bunch of workers. You want a bunch of soldiers. What do you do?

Why, let's look at our tips. "Try to mine minerals." Okay, you start mining minerals. "Recruit lots of soldiers." You can't do that, because you don't have a barracks, so you'll have to build one. "Recruit lots of workers." But wait, recruiting workers and building a barracks both require minerals. Which one should you do? I dunno. "It's a good idea for a mineral site to have between 22 and 30 workers." Okay, you have six; how quickly can you recruit sixteen more workers? What if you have too many workers? "Workers are recruited at a command center." You already knew that! "Soldiers are recruited at a barracks." You don't have one!

Aha, you say, what we need is a checklist of macromanagement habits. Maybe you should put all of those habits in a deck of flash cards, so then you can memorize them all. What if, despite knowing a hundred macromanagement habits, you realize that you're not actually using all of them? Well, that's just akrasia, right? Maybe you need to take more vitamin D or something...

But no, that's not what you need. The "big, long list of tips" is simply not a good way to organize information so as to make it useful. What you need is a macromanagement system.

So, here's a system for macromanagement in Starcraft:

If you have unused buildings, have them recruit units [which also uses minerals].

If, after the above, you have unus

...
The substrate
by NancyLebovitz — 2012-11-30T05:38:20.576Z

If we're part of a simulation, how likely is it that whatever it's running on is using the same sort of atoms we've discovered?

I think the answer is it's very unlikely. The closest resemblance I find plausible is that our atoms are simplified versions of the substrate atoms, and I wouldn't count on even that much.

I'm pretty sure that a simulation has to be smaller in some sense than the universe that's running it, which means that it has fewer things or simpler things (these might be equivalent because more simplicity means fewer sub-components in things) than the home universe.

You might do a meticulous job of simulating your matter in a simulation, but I suggest that you'd only bother in a small and/or specialized simulation, and even if you did, there's a reasonable chance that you don't have a full understanding of your own physics.

When I look at the range of human-created simulations (dreams, daydreams, fiction, games, art, scientific, political, and commercial simulations) and contemplate that we've probably only explored a small part of the possibilities for simulation, it seems vanishingly unlikely that we're in an ancestor simulation.

When I first came up with the question of the nature of our possible substrate, I didn't think there was a way to get a grip on it at all, but at least now I've got some clarity about the difficulties I think.

So onwards to practical questions. Is there any conceivable way of telling whether we're in a simulation and if so, learning something about its nature? Is it worth trying to get out of the Big Box?

Edited to add: I should think that being a simulation is an existential risk.
Philosophy Needs to Trust Your Rationality Even Though It Shouldn't
by lukeprog — 2012-11-29T21:00:29.400Z

Part of the sequence: Rationality and Philosophy

Philosophy is notable for the extent to which disagreements with respect to even those most basic questions persist among its most able practitioners, despite the fact that the arguments thought relevant to the disputed questions are typically well-known to all parties to the dispute.

Thomas Kelly

The goal of philosophy is to uncover certain truths... [But] philosophy continually leads experts with the highest degree of epistemic virtue, doing the very best they can, to accept a wide array of incompatible doctrines. Therefore, philosophy is an unreliable instrument for finding truth. A person who enters the field is highly unlikely to arrive at true answers to philosophical questions.

Jason Brennan

After millennia of debate, philosophers remain heavily divided on many core issues. According to the largest-ever survey of philosophers, they're split 25-24-18 on deontology / consequentialism / virtue ethics, 35-27 on empiricism vs. rationalism, and 57-27 on physicalism vs. non-physicalism.

Sometimes, they are even divided on psychological questions that psychologists have already answered: Philosophers are split evenly on the question of whether it's possible to make a moral judgment without being motivated to abide by that judgment, even though we already know that this is possible for some people with damage to their brain's reward system, for example many Parkinson's patients, and patients with damage to the ventromedial frontal cortex (Schroeder et al. 2012).1

Why are physicists, biologists, and psychologists more prone to reach consensus than philosophers?2 One standard story is that "the method of science is to amass such an enormous mountain of evidence that... scientists cannot ignore it." Hence, religionists might still argue that Earth is flat or that evolutionary theory and the Big Bang theory are "lies from the pit of hell," and philosophers might still be divided about whether somebody can make a moral judgment they aren't themselves motivated by, but scientists have reached consensus about such things.

In its dependence on masses of evidence and definitive experiments, science doesn't trust your rationality:

Science is built around the assumption that you're too stupid and self-deceiving to just use [probability theory]. After all, if it was that simple, we wouldn't need a social process of s

...
Meetup : Seattle Meetup: Bayes Theorem Tutorial
by jsalvatier — 2012-11-29T07:31:04.236Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Meetup: Bayes Theorem Tutorial

WHEN:
02 December 2012 04:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
1900 NE 68th St. Seattle, WA 98115

This Sunday Brendan will be giving a tutorial on Bayes theorem at the Ravenna House. I understand there will be a couple different explanations and some practice problems.

Normal socializing and dinner to follow.

As a follow up to Brendan's tutorial, next week I will be give a non-technical introduction to thinking with statistical models. In particular, the usefulness of Hierarchical Models and other Hidden Variable models.

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Meetup: Bayes Theorem Tutorial
Intuitions Aren't Shared That Way
by lukeprog — 2012-11-29T06:19:50.305Z

Part of the sequence: Rationality and Philosophy

Consider these two versions of the famous trolley problem:

Stranger: A train, its brakes failed, is rushing toward five people. The only way to save the five people is to throw the switch sitting next to you, which will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the five people. However, there is a stranger standing on the side track with his back turned, and if you proceed to thrown the switch, the five people will be saved, but the person on the side track will be killed.

Child: A train, its brakes failed, is rushing toward five people. The only way to save the five people is to throw the switch sitting next to you, which will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the five people. However, there is a 12-year-old boy standing on the side track with his back turned, and if you proceed to throw the switch, the five people will be saved, but the boy on the side track will be killed.

Here it is: a standard-form philosophical thought experiment. In standard analytic philosophy, the next step is to engage in conceptual analysis — a process in which we use our intuitions as evidence for one theory over another. For example, if your intuitions say that it is "morally right" to throw the switch in both cases above, then these intuitions may be counted as evidence for consequentialism, for moral realism, for agent neutrality, and so on.

Alexander (2012) explains:

Philosophical intuitions play an important role in contemporary philosophy. Philosophical intuitions provide data to be explained by our philosophical theories [and] evidence that may be adduced in arguments for their truth... In this way, the role... of intuitional evidence in philosophy is similar to the role... of perceptual evidence in science...

Is knowledge simply justified true belief? Is a belief justified just in case it is caused by a reliable cognitive mechanism? Does a name refer to whatever object uniquely or best satisfies the description associated with it? Is a person morally responsible for an action only if she could have acted otherwise? Is an action morally right just in case it provides the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people all else being equal? When confronted with these kinds of questions, philosophers often appeal to philosophical intuitions about real or ima

...
[SEQ RERUN] Total Tech Wars
by MinibearRex — 2012-11-29T05:16:48.866Z

Today's post, Total Tech Wars was originally published on November 29, 2008. A summary:

Unpleasant situations can arise if people believe that the development of some sort of AI is likely to be a big win for the developers, and a big loss for everyone else. Avoid the possibility of a total war between development groups by avoiding framing the conversation about AI in that way.

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 Dreams of Autarky, 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.
Causal Universes
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2012-11-29T04:08:18.859Z

Followup to: Stuff that Makes Stuff Happen

Previous meditation: Does the idea that everything is made of causes and effects meaningfully constrain experience? Can you coherently say how reality might look, if our universe did not have the kind of structure that appears in a causal model?

I can describe to you at least one famous universe that didn't look like it had causal structure, namely the universe of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter.

You might think that J. K. Rowling's universe doesn't have causal structure because it contains magic - that wizards wave their wands and cast spells, which doesn't make any sense and goes against all science, so J. K. Rowling's universe isn't 'causal'.

In this you would be completely mistaken. The domain of "causality" is just "stuff that makes stuff happen and happens because of other stuff". If Dumbledore waves his wand and therefore a rock floats into the air, that's causality. You don't even have to use words like 'therefore', let alone big fancy phrases like 'causal process', to put something into the lofty-sounding domain of causality. There's causality anywhere there's a noun, a verb, and a subject: 'Dumbledore's wand lifted the rock.' So far as I could tell, there wasn't anything in Lord of the Rings that violated causality.

You might worry that J. K. Rowling had made a continuity error, describing a spell working one way in one book, and a different way in a different book. But we could just suppose that the spell had changed over time. If we actually found ourselves in that apparent universe, and saw a spell have two different effects on two different occasions, we would not conclude that our universe was uncomputable, or that it couldn't be made of causes and effects.

No, the only part of J. K. Rowling's universe that violates 'cause and effect' is...

...
...
...

...the Time-Turners, of course.

A Time-Turner, in Rowling's universe, is a small hourglass necklace that sends you back in time 1 hour each time you spin it. In Rowling's universe, this time-travel doesn't allow for changing history; whatever you do after you go back, it's already happened. The universe containing the time-travel is a stable, self-consistent object.

If a time machine does allow for changing history, it's easy to imagine how to compute it; you could easily write a computer program which would...
Group rationality diary, 11/28/12
by cata — 2012-11-28T09:08:11.802Z

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of November 27th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

(Sorry for being a day late on this one, life is really full of things lately!)