trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Practical Rationality
by Manfred — 2014-08-31T22:43:27.697Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Practical Rationality

WHEN:
07 September 2014 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
206 S. Cedar St, 61801

What techniques do you use for acting effectively given that you are a squishy irrational meatbag? Jack will contribute some ideas which he has smuggled to us from CFAR.

Also, we will continue refining the rules of Wits and Wagers.

Google group.

Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Practical Rationality
Tips for writing philosophical texts
by Jan_Rzymkowski — 2014-08-31T22:38:38.332Z

For about four years I am struggling to write a series of articles presenting few of my ideas. While this "philosophy" (I'd rather avoid being too pompous about it) is still developing, there is a bunch of stuff of which I have a clear image in my mind. It is a framework for model building, with some possible applications for AI developement, paradox resolving, semantics. Not any serious impact, but I do believe it would prove useful.

I tried making notes or plans for articles several times, but every time I was discouraged by those problems:

presented concept is too obvious

presented concept is superflous

presented concept needs more basic ideas to be introduced beforehand

So the core problem is that to show applications of the theory (or generally more interesing results), more basic concepts must be introduced first. Yet presenting the basics seems boring and uninsightful without the application side. This seems to characterise many complex ideas.

Can you provide me with any practical tips as how to tackle this problem?
Superintelligence reading group
by KatjaGrace — 2014-08-31T14:59:31.480Z

In just over two weeks I will be running an online reading group on Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, on behalf of MIRI. It will be here on LessWrong. This is an advance warning, so you can get a copy and get ready for some stimulating discussion. MIRI's post, appended below, gives the details.

Added: At the bottom of this post is a list of the discussion posts so far.

Nick Bostrom’s eagerly awaited Superintelligence comes out in the US this week. To help you get the most out of it, MIRI is running an online reading group where you can join with others to ask questions, discuss ideas, and probe the arguments more deeply.

The reading group will “meet” on a weekly post on the LessWrong discussion forum. For each ‘meeting’, we will read about half a chapter of Superintelligence, then come together virtually to discuss. I’ll summarize the chapter, and offer a few relevant notes, thoughts, and ideas for further investigation. (My notes will also be used as the source material for the final reading guide for the book.)

Discussion will take place in the comments. I’ll offer some questions, and invite you to bring your own, as well as thoughts, criticisms and suggestions for interesting related material. Your contributions to the reading group might also (with permission) be used in our final reading guide for the book.

We welcome both newcomers and veterans on the topic. Content will aim to be intelligible to a wide audience, and topics will range from novice to expert level. All levels of time commitment are welcome.

We will follow this preliminary reading guide, produced by MIRI, reading one section per week.

If you have already read the book, don’t worry! To the extent you remember what it says, your superior expertise will only be a bonus. To the extent you don’t remember what it says, now is a good time for a review! If you don’t have time to read the book, but still want to participate, you are also welcome to join in. I will provide summaries, and many things will have page numbers, in case you want to skip to the relevant parts.

If this sounds good to you, first grab a copy of Superintelligence. You may also want to sign up here to be emailed when the discussion begins each week. The first virtua...
Announcement: Superintelligence reading group
by KatjaGrace — 2014-08-31T14:03:12.000Z

I will be running an online reading group on Nick Bostrom‘s new book, Superintelligence, on behalf of MIRI (my employer). Please join me! I append the post from MIRI’s blog, with more details.

Nick Bostrom’s eagerly awaited Superintelligence comes out in the US this week. To help you get the most out of it, MIRI is running an online reading group where you can join with others to ask questions, discuss ideas, and probe the arguments more deeply.

The reading group will “meet” on a weekly post on the LessWrong discussion forum. For each ‘meeting’, we will read about half a chapter of Superintelligence, then come together virtually to discuss. I’ll summarize the chapter, and offer a few relevant notes, thoughts, and ideas for further investigation. (My notes will also be used as the source material for the final reading guide for the book.)

Discussion will take place in the comments. I’ll offer some questions, and invite you to bring your own, as well as thoughts, criticisms and suggestions for interesting related material. Your contributions to the reading group might also (with permission) be used in our final reading guide for the book.

We welcome both newcomers and veterans on the topic. Content will aim to be intelligible to a wide audience, and topics will range from novice to expert level. All levels of time commitment are welcome.

We will follow this preliminary reading guide, produced by MIRI, reading one section per week.

If you have already read the book, don’t worry! To the extent you remember what it says, your superior expertise will only be a bonus. To the extent you don’t remember what it says, now is a good time for a review! If you don’t have time to read the book, but still want to participate, you are also welcome to join in. I will provide summaries, and many things will have page numbers, in case you want to skip to the relevant parts.

If this sounds good to you, first grab a copy of Superintelligence. You may also want to sign up here to be emailed when the discussion begins each week. The first virtual meeting (forum post) will go live at 6pm Pacific on Monday, September 15th. Following meetings will start at 6pm every Monday, so if you’d like to coordinate for quick fire discussion with others, put that into your calendar. If you prefer flexibility, come by any time! And remember that if there are any people you would espec...
Meetup : Utrecht: Climate Change
by immasix — 2014-08-31T13:52:20.078Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Climate Change

WHEN:
02 November 2014 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Film Café Oskar, Slachtstraat 5, Utrecht

We have biweekly meetups in a pub in Utrecht, near Central Station. For details, please look on meetup.com which is supposed to be up to date.
http://www.meetup.com/LWEANL/events/202723022/

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Climate Change
Meetup : Utrecht: Artificial Intelligence
by immasix — 2014-08-31T13:43:18.603Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Artificial Intelligence

WHEN:
19 October 2014 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Film Café Oskar, Slachtstraat 5, Utrecht

We have biweekly meetups in a pub in Utrecht, near Central Station. For details, please look on meetup.com which is supposed to be up to date.
http://www.meetup.com/LWEANL/events/202722812/

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Artificial Intelligence
Meetup : Utrecht: Effective Altruism and Politics
by immasix — 2014-08-31T13:40:15.659Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Effective Altruism and Politics

WHEN:
05 October 2014 02:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE:
Film Café Oskar, Slachtstraat 5, Utrecht

We have biweekly meetups in a pub in Utrecht, near Central Station. For details, please look on meetup.com which is supposed to be up to date.
http://www.meetup.com/LWEANL/events/202722652/

Discussion article for the meetup : Utrecht: Effective Altruism and Politics
Robin Hanson's "Overcoming Bias"  posts as an e-book.
by Paul Crowley — 2014-08-31T13:26:24.555Z

At Luke Muehlhauser's request, I wrote a script to scrape all of Robin Hanson's posts to Overcoming Bias into an e-book; here's a first beta release. Please comment here with any problems—posts in the wrong order, broken links, bad formatting, missing posts. Thanks!

robinhansonblogs-beta-2014-08-31.epub

robinhansonblogs-beta-2014-08-31.mobi
Why appearance matters or "to behave as if"
by AnnaLeptikon — 2014-08-31T10:36:30.117Z

"*checking the name of the writer* Ooookay, this article about appearance is written by a woman. As was expected. It's probably not worth to read it..."

If you thought something like this you confirmed how prejudices dominate our mind. And even if you didn't think something like that, you can't argue its importance away.

prejudices and stereotypes

Prejudice is prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case.

The cognitive function of stereotypes is to help make sense of the world. They are a form of categorization that helps to simplify and systematize information. Thus, information is more easily identified, recalled, predicted, and reacted to.

Prejudices and stereotypes might be useful and also harmful in some situations, but they definitely exist with all their advantages and disadvantages. They are based on the fastest available information. General assumptions about latent variables (such as intelligence and character) are made ​​on external factors such as behavior and appearance.

Pygmalion effect/self-fulfilling prophecy

The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon whereby the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.[1] (Or the observer thinks it would be so!) A corollary of the Pygmalion effect is the golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.[1]

So what others (and we) expect from us influences how they and we behave and therefore influences our future and what we become!

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses.

Because it is easier to confirm people in their presumption than to convince them otherwise, it's a good decision to look like you want people to think you are as a person.

Minority influence/innovation

Majority influence refers to the majority trying to produce conformity on the minority, while minority influence is converting the majority to adopt the thinking of the minority group.[1] Unlike other forms of influence, minority influence usually involves a personal shift in private opinion. Minority influence is also a central component of identity politics.

Minorities have a bigger impact when they: are consistent, are part of the ingroup and diffe...
Meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - Habits
by luminosity — 2014-08-31T00:36:41.584Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - Habits

WHEN:
07 September 2014 04:00:00PM (+1000)

WHERE:
Humanist House, 10 Shepherd St Chippendale

This time around we will be looking at how to establish or replace habits. I personally think the ability to establish habits deliberately is crucially useful in crafting the life you want.

As per usual, we will be having an optional dinner after the main event.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Rationality Dojo - Habits
Solstice 2014 / Rational Ritual Retreat - A Call to Arms
by Raemon — 2014-08-30T17:51:17.058Z

Summary:

• I'm beginning work on the 2014 Winter Solstice. There are a lot of jobs to be done, and the more people who can dedicate serious time to it, the better the end result will be and the more locations it can take place. A few people have volunteered serious time, and I wanted to issue a general call, to anyone who's wanted to be part of this but wasn't sure how. Send me an e-mail at raemon777@gmail.com if you'd like to help with any of the tasks listed below (or others I haven't thought of).
• More generally, I think people working on rational ritual, in any form, should be sharing notes and collaborating more. There's a fair number of us, but we're scattered across the country and haven't really felt like part of the same team. And it seems a bit silly for people working on ritual, to be scattered and unified. So I am hosting the first Rational Ritual Retreat at the end of September. The exact date and location have yet to be determined. You can apply at humanistculture.com, noting your availability, and I will determine

The Rational Ritual Retreat

For the past three years, I've been running a winter solstice holiday, celebrating science and human achievement. Several people have come up to me and told me it was one of the most unique, profound experiences they've participated in, inspiring them to work harder to make sure humanity has a bright future.

I've also had a number of people concerned that I'm messing with dangerous aspects of human psychology, fearing what will happen to a rationality community that gets involved with ritual.
Both of these thoughts are incredibly important. I've written a lot on the value and danger of ritual. [1]
Ritual is central to the human experience. We've used it for thousands of years to bind groups together. It helps us internalize complex ideas. A winning version of rationality needs *some* way of taking complex ideas and getting System 1 to care about them, and I think ritual is at least one tool we should consider.

In the past couple weeks, a few thoughts occurred to me at once:

1) Figuring out a rational approach to ritual that has a meaningful, useful effect on the world will require a lot of coordination among many skilled people.

2) If this project *were* to go badly somehow, I think the most likely reason would be someone copying parts of what I'm working on without...
[LINK] Article in the Guardian about CSER, mentions MIRI and paperclip AI
by Sarokrae — 2014-08-30T14:04:05.959Z

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/30/saviours-universe-four-unlikely-men-save-world

The article is titled "The scientific A-Team saving the world from killer viruses, rogue AI and the paperclip apocalypse", and features interviews with Martin Rees, Huw Price, Jaan Tallinn and Partha Dasgupta. The author takes a rather positive tone about CSER and MIRI's endeavours, and mentions x-risks other than AI (bioengineered pandemic, global warming with human interference, distributed manufacturing).

I find it interesting that the inferential distance for the layman to the concept of paperclipping AI is much reduced by talking about paperclipping America, rather than the entire universe: though the author admits still struggling with the concept. Unusually for an journalist who starts off unfamiliar with these concepts, he writes in a tone that suggests that he takes the ideas seriously, without the sort of "this is very far-fetched and thus I will not lower myself to seriously considering it" countersignalling usually seen with x-risk coverage. There is currently the usual degree of incredulity in the comments section though.

For those unfamiliar with The Guardian, it is a British left-leaning newspaper with a heavy focus on social justice and left-wing political issues.
Meetup Report Thread: September 2014
by Viliam_Bur — 2014-08-30T12:32:13.625Z

If you had an interesting Less Wrong meetup recently, but don't have the time to write up a big report to post to Discussion, feel free to write a comment here. Even if it's just a couple lines about what you did and how people felt about it, it might encourage some people to attend meetups or start meetups in their area.

If you have the time, you can also describe what types of exercises you did, what worked and what didn't. This could help inspire meetups to try new things and improve themselves in various ways.

If you're inspired by what's posted below and want to organize a meetup, check out this page for some resources to get started! You can also check FrankAdamek's weekly post on meetups for the week.

Previous Meetup Report Thread: February 2014

Guidelines: Please post the meetup reports as top-level comments, and debate the specific meetup below its comment. Anything else goes under the "Meta" top-level comment. The title of this thread should be interpreted as "up to and including September 2014", which means feel free to post reports of meetups that happened in August, July, June, etc.
LessWrong Hamburg Meetup Notes - Diet
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-08-30T09:40:23.009Z

Review of our LessWrong Hamburg Meetup - Diet

After I was approched a few times about another meetup I scheduled it on short notice and six of us met yesterday evening at my place.

Summary

It was an mostly unstructured talk where we discussed diet from different angles and a few other tangential topics. I also reported from my participation in the LW Berlin Meetup a few weeks ago (which led to a side-track about polyphasic sleep).

We discussed the benefits and risks of misc. dietary recommendations and seemed to agree on most points, most of which coincide with those discussed on LW before:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/jrt/lifestyle_interventions_to_increase_longevity

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/121/21/2271.short

Links about polyphasic sleep:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/segmented-sleep/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ip6/polyphasic_sleep_seed_study_reprise/

Other links for topics discussed during the meetup (for reference):

http://www.wired.com/2010/12/kids-study-bees/

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/18/rsbl.2010.1056

http://littlebits.cc/

http://code.org/learn

There will be further meetups which will be scheduled via doodle.de (and then announced on the mailing-list).

Other LW Hamburg Meetup reviews

Third Meetup Notes: Small Steps Forward

Second Meetup Notes: In need of Structure

First Meetup Notes: Starting small
Meetup : Michigan Meetup
by Scott Alexander — 2014-08-30T05:09:16.032Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Michigan Meetup

WHEN:
07 September 2014 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
19334 Angling Street, Livonia, MI

Our more-or-less trimonthly Ann Arbor + Detroit area meetup. Myself and Ozy will be hosting, and Swimmer963 will be visiting from Canada.

No particular topic, but bring games and discussion topics as they interest you.

Discussion article for the meetup : Michigan Meetup
Funding cannibalism motivates concern for overheads
by Thrasymachus — 2014-08-30T00:42:13.492Z

Summary: Overhead expenses' (CEO salary, percentage spent on fundraising) are often deemed a poor measure of charity effectiveness by Effective Altruists, and so they disprefer means of charity evaluation which rely on these. However, 'funding cannibalism' suggests that these metrics (and the norms that engender them) have value: if fundraising is broadly a zero-sum game between charities, then there's a commons problem where all charities could spend less money on fundraising and all do more good, but each is locally incentivized to spend more. Donor norms against increasing spending on zero-sum 'overheads' might be a good way of combating this. This valuable collective action of donors may explain the apparent underutilization of fundraising by charities, and perhaps should make us cautious in undermining it.

The EA critique of charity evaluation

Pre-Givewell, the common means of evaluating charities (Guidestar, Charity Navigator) used a mixture of governance checklists 'overhead indicators'. Charities would gain points both for having features associated with good governance (being transparent in the right ways, balancing budgets, the right sorts of corporate structure), but also in spending its money on programs and avoiding 'overhead expenses' like administration and (especially) fundraising. For shorthand, call this 'common sense' evaluation.

The standard EA critique is that common sense evaluation doesn't capture what is really important: outcomes. It is easy to imagine charities that look really good to common sense evaluation yet have negligible (or negative) outcomes. In the case of overheads, it becomes unclear whether these are even proxy measures of efficacy. Any fundraising that still 'turns a profit' looks like a good deal, whether it comprises five percent of a charity's spending or fifty.

A summary of the EA critique of common sense evaluation that its myopic focus on these metrics gives pathological incentives, as these metrics frequently lie anti-parallel to maximizing efficacy. To score well on these evaluations, charities may be encouraged to raise less money, hire less able staff, and cut corners in their own management, even if doing these things would be false economies.

Funding cannibalism and commons tragedies

In the wake of the ALS 'Ice bucket challenge', Will MacAskill suggested ther...
[question] Recommendations for fasting
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2014-08-30T00:36:55.622Z

I consider fasting for two weeks in October, but I'm unclear about it being beneficial in general or for what kind of fasting it might be beneficial and healthy. Thus this is a kind of request for rational discussion of this topic.

I looked for relevant LW posts but couldn't find clear evidence. I think this is an underrepresented and possibly underutilized lifestyle intervention.

As a starter you might look at

Wikipedia has fasting and intermittent fasting. The latter shows

health benefits include stress resistance, increased insulin sensitivity, reduced morbidity, and increased life span.

But as I'm healthy and lean the benefits of intermittent fasting are likely small for me. What other benefits could there be?

I understand that body cleansing is not a real thing, but I wonder about the effects of fasting on the gut flora. Could it be that fastig has a beneficial effect on your gut bacteria? Just because your body doesn't get rid of any poison this way as the greeks believed doesn't mean that fasting has no cleansing effects at all. It could be that you get rid of some harmful gut bacteria or other parasites (not that these are frequent these days).

Another thing is that fasting might activate and kind of train metabolism cycles which the body may loose over time otherwise. For me it might be too late (I'm 41) for that (mouse experiments show fasting tolerance is plastic with age), but maybe not. On the other hand I'm not very likely to ever need the ability to deal with lack of food (except possibly in case of severe illness of injury).

Links on LW: Low hanging fruit: analyzing your nutrition and If calorie restriction works in humans, should we have observed it already? both mention intermittent fasting but I gain little insight from these.

Also related is Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity. (Intermittent) fasting is also mentioned on Mental rebooting your brain.

My current plan is to use Buchinger style fasting with fruit juice, thin vegetable broth and protein additions (which kind of protein I'm still unclear). I will reduce exercise to balance and walking level types.

I'm also unclear how to measure and track the effect of this diet. Sure I will track weight. But should I track satisaction somehow?

What do you think?