trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Simple embodied cognition hacks
by curiousepic — 2011-03-23T13:24:34.648Z

I've known that the mind can be affected by the body's actions, but I often forget this when sitting at my computer chair for long stretches, and when standing and interacting in social situations I've subconciously cultivated a passive, non-confrontational but minimally interactive posture. But simple physical actions can act as a mild nootropic for certain situations.

Article with citations: 10 Simple Postures that Boost Performance

Article summary:

1. Take a powerful pose to feel powerful

2. Tense muscles for willpower

3. Cross arms for persistence

4. Lie down for insight

5. Nap for cognitive performance, vigour and wakefulness

6. Hand gestures for persuasion

7. Gesture to self for comprehension and memory

8. Smile for happiness

9. Mimic to empathize

10. Imitate for comprehension and prediction
Rationalist sonnets about being a person
by NancyLebovitz — 2011-03-23T01:43:20.521Z

7 sonnets and some comments

A friend tells me that, if there is no soul,
There is no clash of body against mind.
I hate to be contentious, but I find
The case is rather different, on the whole.
For flesh and mind are clashing all the time;
The flesh says "eat!", the mind says "lose some weight."
The mind cries "run!", the flesh drones "vegetate,"
The soul is no wise guilty of this crime.
Am I the athlete who desires to run,
Or else the slugabed who yearns for quiet?
Do I crave food, or would I rather diet?
The I that speaks is both, and neither one.
When flesh and mind contend with shouts obscene
I place the soul--the self--smack in between.

-----smallship1

The body and the mind are the two hands
that weave the self between them, interplay
a dialogue that may change day to day
creates consistency. Self understands
what neither flesh nor mind can apprehend
yet is a fiction and a referee
yet needs to be reined in. So fluently
its guesses become fantasies and end
in things we cannot know, that are not there
-God, Hell and Heaven - all ways to deny
the simple tasks life gives us. Mortify
the flesh, confuse the mind. Hope and despair.
The self's a servant. Use it, never let
it rule, or you will die full of regret.

-----rozk

:
rationality for turing machines
by Alex Flint — 2011-03-23T00:38:01.980Z

What can we say about rational behaviour among realizable algorithms, i.e. Turing machines? What limits can we put on their performance? What exactly does Cox's theorem have to say?

Cox's theorem tells us that optimally rational beliefs imply Bayesian reasoning. But such results are independent of specific models of computation. Can we rigorously apply machinery like Cox's theorem if we state the problem in terms of optimal behaviour among general recursive algorithms -- i.e. realizable algorithms.

To make that a little more concrete: take the problem of writing an algorithm (designing a Turing machine) that processes sensor inputs and writes actions as output. As a concrete Turing machine, the algorithm consists of discrete steps at which it either writes an output symbol (corresponding to some action) or does not (which we can interpret as some null action). There is a second Turing machine corresponding to the external world that responds to each action by changing its state, which feeds back into the sensor inputs of our algorithm. We seek the algorithm maximizing the expectation of some pre-specified utility function U, defined over states of the world. To define this rigorously we need to nail down how utility is summed over time, perhaps something along the lines of Legg and Hutter's formalism would be appropriate. Or perhaps we can just terminate the process after some pre-specified number of steps.

So it seems to me that Cox's theorem establishes that there must be a Bayes-optimal decision at any point in time, and a "Bayes oracle" that always outputs this decisions would be optimal among all algorithms. But such an oracle is certainly not directly realizable as a Turing machine, since at each time step a Turing machine simply changes state, moves the tape, and writes a symbol, whereas a full Bayesian update could require arbitrary amounts of computation. And there is no option of not acting, only of outputting the null action.

One approach would be to make a Bayes-optimal decision about how much computation to spend on each update that takes into account opportunity costs. But while this seems intuitively reasonable, there is also an opportunity cost to performing this computation, so the question really is how sure we can be that this is the best design choice.

Nevertheless, it seems quite reasonable to write Bayesian algo...
Madison WI Meetup, Sat Apr 2nd 1PM
by drethelin — 2011-03-22T23:59:44.995Z

Madison LW Meetup

When: Saturday, April 2 at 1 PM

Where: Manna Cafe at 611 N. Sherman Ave

I'll be in the back room, at the big table. I'll be wearing a very unusual hat and a black hoodie. I'll have a sign saying LW. Hopefully we can start up a regular group!
Seattle Meetup, Sun Mar 27 5pm
by jsalvatier — 2011-03-22T22:22:26.180Z

Posted for IRL friend User:Morgan_Catha who doesn't have the Karma to post:

Hi everyone!

I'm interested in meeting other aspiring rationalists, so I'd like to invite everyone to another Seattle meetup.

I haven't spent a lot of time on LW, but I like the general thrust of the site and this seems like a great way to meet people with similar interests.

Big Time Brewery

4133 University Way NE

Seattle, WA 98105

Sunday, March 27, 5 pm

The place is open to minors until 8 pm. I'll be there with a sign reading "LW".

Also, feel free to email or PM me with questions: morgan.catha@gmail.com

I'm looking forward to seeing you all!
The Heilmeier Questions
by  — 2011-03-22T19:51:32.196Z

Funding agencies like DARPA encourage you to consider a list of questions to guide the development of a good proposal. These are often called the Heilmeier questions or Heilmeier catechism. I often look back at this checklist when starting a new research project; they provide good inspiration, but as I read LW, I realize they could use reworking. These are the original questions:

What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.

How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?

What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?

Who cares?

If you're successful, what difference will it make?

What are the risks and the payoffs?

How much will it cost?

How long will it take?

What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?

The best question is number 3, which I've seen in a more effective form as "Why now and not last year or ten years ago?" This is a perfect outside view question that forces you to confront the possibility that there are lots of smart people around, none of them has done this, and there is probably some good reason for this. You should know the reason before you start, and reasons like "They weren't smart enough" or "They simply never thought about this topic" are probably incorrect.

1,5,6,9 are OK but vague. "What would success look like? Is that what I want?" is a question often overlooked, even for projects that are personally very important, like picking a career. When I asked myself this question in grad school, I found myself pushed towards changing fields.

The worst are 7 and 8, which should be "How much have projects like this one cost? How long have projects like this one taken?"

The usefulness of such catechisms is a delicate balancing act. The questions should be broad enough to apply to many situations, but specific enough to start a specific train of thought for each input problem.

A proposed, simplified revision. I would love feedback.

So you want to solve problem x using method y.

What difference would it make if you solved this problem? Is that what you want?

Why hasn't someone already solved this problem? What makes you think what stopped them won't stop you?

Are there sub-problems to x? Repeat 1 and 2 for these sub-problems.

Are there other potential methods to solve this problem? If so, why are you considering y and not the others?

Are

...
Bayesian Methods Reading List
by  — 2011-03-22T12:25:00.688Z

I'm reading this for fun -- tutorials and book recommendations on the Bayesian methods toolboox with a cognitive science/machine learning slant. Comes from the Computational Cognitive Science Lab at Berkeley. I recommend the general 2008 tutorial.

Useful stuff included in tutorial:

Parameter estimation

Model selection

Why Occam's Razor emerges naturally from the Conservation of Expected Evidence

Graphical models

Hierarchical Bayesian models
Rationality, Singularity, Method, and the Mainstream
by Mitchell_Porter — 2011-03-22T12:06:16.404Z

Upon reading this, my immediate response was:
What does this have to do with the Singularity Institute's purpose? You're the Singularity Institute, not the Rationality Institute.
I can see that, if you have a team of problem solvers, having a workshop or a retreat designed to enhance their problem-solving skills makes sense. But as described, there's no indication that graduates of the Boot Camp will then go on to tackle conceptual problems of AI design or tactics for the Singularity.
What seems to be happening is that, instead of making connections to people who know about cognitive neuroscience, decision theory, and the theory of algorithms, there is a drive to increase the number of people who share a particular subjective philosophy and subjective practice of rationality - perhaps out of a belief that the discoveries needed to produce Friendly AI won't be made by people who haven't adopted this philosophy and this practice.
I find this a little ominous for several reasons:
It could be a symptom of mission creep. The mission, as I recall, was to design and code a Friendly artificial intelligence. But "produc[ing] formidable rationalists" sounds like it's meant to make the world better in a generalized way, by producing people who can shine the light of rationality into every dark corner, et cetera. Maybe someone should be doing this, but it's potentially a huge distraction from the more important task.
Also, I'm far more impressed by the specific ideas Eliezer has come up with over the years - the concept of seed AI; the concept of Friendly AI; CEV; TDT - than by his ruminations about rationality in the Sequences. They're interesting, yes. It's also interesting to hear Feynman talk about how to do science, or to read Einstein's reflections on life. But the discoveries in physics which complemented those of Einstein and Feynman weren't achieved by people who studied their intellectual biographies and sought to reproduce their subjective method; they were achieved by other people of high intelligence who also studied the physical world.
It may seem at times that the supposed professionals in the FAI-relevant fields I listed above are terminally obtuse, for having to failed to grasp their own relevance to the FAI problem, or the schema of the solution as proposed by SIAI. That, and the way that people working in AI are just sleepwalking towards the creation ...
Designing serious games - a request for help
by taryneast — 2011-03-22T11:29:35.803Z

We need some ideas for serious games. Games that will help us be better. Games that reward us for improving ourselves (even if just by the satisfaction of seeing our scores improve). Games that will help us in our quest of Tsoyoku Naritai

We've got an upcoming hackday in London - where we'll have a (small) bunch of people able to code up any good ideas into something usable... but we need **you** to help us come up with a whole bunch of good ideas.

To start with, they should be simple ideas - not as complex as Rationalist Clue (which is an awesome idea... but we all have dayjobs too). I've got in mind something like the kinds of games you see at luminosity

The ideas should address individual biases - a way of training us to: a) recognise when we've accidentally engaged a bias b) reward us when we find a way to get the "right answer" in an unbiased manner.

We can do the programming (more help would of course be welcome), we can even come up with some ideas of our own...

but we are few, and you are many... and the more ideas we get, the better we can choose between them... so let's roll.
Rationality Boot Camp
by Jasen — 2011-03-22T08:37:46.395Z

It’s been over a year since the Singularity Institute launched our ongoing Visiting Fellows Program and we’ve learned a lot in the process of running it. This summer we’re going to try something different. We’re going to run Rationality Boot Camp.

We are going to try to take ten weeks and fill them with activities meant to teach mental skills - if there's reading to be done, we'll tell you to get it done in advance. We aren't just aiming to teach skills like betting at the right odds or learning how to take into account others' information, we're going to practice techniques like mindfulness meditation and Rejection Therapy (making requests that you know will be rejected), in order to teach focus, non-attachment, social courage and all the other things that are also needed to produce formidable rationalists. Participants will learn how to draw (so that they can learn how to pay attention to previously unnoticed details, and see that they can do things that previously seemed like mysterious superpowers). We will play games, and switch games every few days, to get used to novelty and practice learning.

We're going to run A/B tests on you, and track the results to find out which training activities work best, and begin the tradition of evidence-based rationality training.

In short, we're going to start constructing the kind of program that universities would run if they actually wanted to teach you how to think.

And then at the end, some of us are going to go to Burning Man for training in desert survival and living in an emotionally positive community.

When I call the program Rationality Boot Camp, I mean this quite literally. Six days per week, participants will rise, meditate, prepare and eat food, attend lectures, participate in group and individual activities and exercise together.

Everyone who applies needs to have read at least some of the Sequences, and may be assigned particular posts as makeup material - in which case you will need to read them before you arrive and you may be turned away otherwise. Apart from that, we'll look for a mix of people who've demonstrated high productivity and who already seem like good epistemic rationalists. The program will begin in the first week of June and continue through mid-August.&n...
Costs and Benefits of Scholarship
by lukeprog — 2011-03-22T02:19:46.632Z

Scholarship is excellent, but it is also expensive. It takes a long time to catch up to the state of the art, even for a narrow subject.

I recently read 90% of the literature on machine ethics, a recent and small field of inquiry, and it took me about 40 hours to find all the literature, acquire it, and read (or skim) through it. Doing the same thing for an older and larger subject will take far more time than that. And of course most of the literature on any subject is not valuable.

Other times, you get lucky. Let's say you want to figure out how to beat procrastination. You could introspect your way to a plausible solution, but you might end up being wrong. So, you check Wikipedia. Not very useful. Next, you search Google Scholar for "procrastination." An article on the first page looks like what you want: an overview of the scientific research on procrastination. It's called "The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure," and it's available online! As it turns out, you can do a pretty decent job of catching up on the science of procrastination just by reading one article. (Of course it's not that easy. You should be more thorough, and explore alternate perspectives. Psychology is not settled chemistry.)

And in machine ethics, it turns out that most of what you'd want to know is summarized nicely in a single book: Moral Machines (2009).

But on other topics, you won't be so lucky. Suppose you want to study the neuroscience of how desire works. You check Wikipedia, and it has a section on the psychology and neurology of desire. But it doesn't tell you much. A Google Scholar search is even worse. You check the index of a large neuroscience textbook for "desire," and come up with basically nothing. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on desire is pretty good, but it barely touches on neuroscience. It does point you to two good resources, though: the book Three Faces of Desire, which sounds like it will cover the neuroscience, and the work of neuroscientist Kent Berridge. Now, because I have studied the neuroscience of desire, let me spoil the surprise at this point: this research project is not going to be so easy. You have a very long "literature slog" ahead of you.

So I won't argue that scholarship is always or even usually the ins...
Google lends further legitimacy to Bitcoin
by SilasBarta — 2011-03-21T22:26:57.329Z

Though not yet an "official" project, Google has released a Bitcoin client. As you may remember, there were concerns here about what the government/legal reaction to Bitcoin [1] will be, and the significance of certain groups lending their support to it. EFF and SIAI accept Bitcoin donations, which helps, and this action by Google is another big step.

Previous articles: SIAI accepting Bitcoin donations, Discussion on making money with Bitcoin (Clippy warning on the latter)

[1] In short, it's an anonymous P2P crypto-currency with no transaction fees, in which new units are generated by spending computer cycles computing hashes until you find one with specific properties.
On Branching vs Probability
by AlephNeil — 2011-03-21T20:14:08.063Z

Abstract: A boring, long-winded account of some extremely basic ideas is given.

The "Coin Universe"

Imagine a universe split into subsystems A and B, where causal influences go from A to B but not vice versa. A is extremely simple - each day either a "heads event" or "tails event" takes place, which is visible to observers in B as a red or green patch at a certain place in the sky. In fact, coin events are the only 'communication' between A and B.

Naturally, the observers in B would like to understand the pattern of coin events so they formulate some theories.

Two Rival Theories

Theory 1: Every day, the universe 'splits' into two. The entire contents of B are 'copied' somehow. One copy sees a heads event, the other copy sees a tails event.

Theory 2: There is no splitting. Instead, some kind of (deterministic or stochastic) process in A is producing the sequence of events. As a special case (Theory 2a) it could be that each coin event is independent and random, and has a probability 1/2 of being heads. (Let's also write down another special case (Theory 2b) where each coin event has probability 9/10 of being heads.)

The Position of Jupiter

Imagine that we're primitive astronomers trying to understand the trajectory of Jupiter through the sky. We take for granted that our observations are indexed by a variable called "time" and that a complete theory of Jupiter's trajectory would have the form: "Position of Jupiter at time t = F(t)" for some function F that we can calculate. Suppose such a theory is formulated.

However, if we believe in a point P such that P is "the position of Jupiter" then the theory does not resolve all of our uncertainty about P, for it merely tells us: "If you ask the question at time t then the answer is F(t)." If the question is asked "timelessly" then there is no unique answer. There isn't even a probability distribution over the set of possible answers, because there is no 'probability distribution over time'.1

Theories 1 and 2 are Incommensurable

Can the scientists in the Coin Universe decide empirically between Theories 1 and 2a? Imagine that our scientists already have a 'theory of everything' for B's own physics, and that coin events are the only phenomena about which there remains controversy.

Barbara believes in theory 2a and she thinks that the probability that the next toss is heads is 1/2. Alfred believes in theory 1 and th

...
Tortuga Meetups Starting this Thursday
by divia — 2011-03-21T18:11:15.940Z

Shannon and I are going to be hosting South Bay Less Wrong meetups at the Tortuga community in Mountain View on Thursday nights starting at 7. Come prepared to reveal something you're consistently irrational about. We'll spend some time throwing ideas around and then hang out and mingle.

Bringing paleo-friendly food is a bonus but not required.

If you'd like to come, request an invitation from our google group, Tortuga Rationalists.
Don’t warn nonspecifically!
by KatjaGrace — 2011-03-21T16:44:09.000Z

This is a decent warning sign. Image via Wikipedia

I hate safety warnings. It’s not that I’m hurt by someone out there’s condescending belief that I can’t work out whether irons are for drying children. And I welcome the endless mental accretion of terrifying facts about obscure ways one can die. What really bothers me is that safety warnings often contain no information except ‘don’t do X’.

In a world covered in advice not to do X, and devoid of information about what will happen if you do X, except it will be negative sometimes, it is hard and irritating to work out when it is appropriate to do X. Most things capable of being costly are a good idea some of the time. And if you were contemplating doing X, you probably have some reason. On top of that, as far as I can tell many of the warnings are about effects so weak that if you wanted to do X for some reason, that would almost certainly overwhelm the reason not to. But since all you are ever told is not to do X, you are never quite sure whether you are being warned off some trivial situation where a company haven’t actually tested whether their claims about their product still apply, or protected from a genuine risk.

My kettle came with a warning that if I ever boil it dry, I should replace it. Is this because it will become liable to explode? Because it might become discoloured? My sandwich meat came with a warning not to eat it after seven days. Presumably this is because they can’t guarantee a certain low level of risk after that, but since I don’t know what that level is, it’s not so useful to me. If I have a lot else to eat I will want a lower level of risk than if I’m facing the alternative of having to go shopping right now or of fainting from hunger. Medical warnings are very similar.

Perhaps it’s sensible to just ignore warnings when they conflict much with your preconceptions or are costly. In that case, how am I worse off than if there just weren’t warnings? How can I complain about people not giving me enough information? What obligation do they have to give me any?

There is the utilitarian argument that telling me would be much more beneficial than it is costly. But besides that, I think I am often worse off than if warning givers just shut up most of the time. Ignoring warnings is distracting and psychological...
Singularity goes mainstream (in philosophy)
by lukeprog — 2011-03-21T03:18:43.782Z

The journal (JCS) that published Chalmers' article on the singularity will be devoting an entire issue in January 2012 to responses to Chalmers' article. Authors who have agreed to contribute so far include big names like Ned Block, Paul Churchland, Dan Dennett, Jesse Prinz, Drew McDermott, and Robert Sawyer. (Also, Kevin Kelly and Ray Kurzweil.)

JCS is also accepting submissions. See the last page of this PDF.