trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[Draft] How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup
by Kaj_Sotala — 2012-03-29T18:50:08.165Z

How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup is a guide that I've been working on, based on lukeprog's instructions, for the last week and a half. As it says in the beginning:

This document is written for anyone who wants to organize a Less Wrong meetup. We expect that this document will help you regardless of whether you want to start a new group or improve an existing one. We have tried to write each section so that it applies in either case.

Here's the table of contents:

Why organize a meetup?

How to build your team of heroes

The organizer

The welcomer

The learning coach

The content provider

The visionary

The networker

How to announce and organize your meetups

Choosing a venue

Making the announcement

The first meetup

Long-term meetup group maintenance

Retain members by being a social group

Conflicts within the group

Learn to recognize status conflicts

Group norms and epistemic hygiene

Meetup content

Discussions and Presentations

Presentations

Topical Discussions

Meta Discussion

Games and Exercises

Aumann’s Thunderdome

Biased Co-operation

Behavioral Analysis

Bluffing Games

Bust-a-Distortion

Calibration Game

Cause and Belief

Five-Minute Debiasing

Hypothetical Apostasies

Paranoid Debating

Precommit to Updates

Rationalization Game

Rejection Therapy

Repetition Game

Status Exercises

Zendo

General Bacchanalia

Example activities at real meetup groups

Projects

This is a draft version, so feedback would be most welcome, particularly on things like:

Is this useful?

Is there something that should be covered isn't covered at all yet?

Do you have new games & exercises to suggest?

Do you have any other content to suggest to any other section?

Do you disagree with some of the advice given?

Do you disagree on way something has been worded?

Etc.

The link above will take you to a Google Docs copy of the document, with the ability to add comments to the draft. Feel free to comment on the guide either as traditional LW comments or by attaching comments to the document itself: both are fine.

EDIT: Here's the most recent version, though without the commenting ability.

EDIT2: The most recent version as of April 11th, with commenting enabled.

EDIT3: First non-draft version; see also this thread.
The Institute For Propaganda Analysis, A Precursor and a Warning
by  — 2012-03-29T18:23:17.118Z

Years ago, I stumbled upon this most interesting segment while reading Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Revisited, of which I have finally found an online version that enables me to share its contents with you:

In their anti-rational propaganda the enemies of freedom systematically pervert the resources of lang­uage in order to wheedle or stampede their victims into thinking, feeling and acting as they, the mind-manipulators, want them to think, feel and act. An education for freedom (and for the love and intelli­gence which are at once the conditions and the results of freedom) must be, among other things, an educa­tion in the proper uses of language. For the last two or three generations philosophers have devoted a great deal of time and thought to the analysis of symbols and the meaning of meaning. How are the words and sentences which we speak related to the things, per­sons and events, with which we have to deal in our day-to-day living? To discuss this problem would take too long and lead us too far afield. Suffice it to say that all the intellectual materials for a sound education in the proper use of language — an education on every level from the kindergarten to the postgraduate school — are now available. Such an education in the art of distinguishing between the proper and the improper use of symbols could be inaugurated immediately. In­deed it might have been inaugurated at any time during the last thirty or forty years. And yet children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, state­ments. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education. In this context the brief, sad history of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis is highly significant. The Institute was founded in 1937, when Nazi propaganda was at its noisiest and most effective, by Mr. Filene, the New England philanthro­pist. Under its auspices analyses of non-rational propa­ganda were made and several texts for the instruction of high school and university students were prepared. Then came the war — a total war on all the fronts, the mental no less than the physical. With all the Allied governments engaging in "psychological warfare, " an insistence upon the desirability of analyzing propa&

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Meetup Interest: Rhode Island
by Scottbert — 2012-03-29T16:40:02.750Z

For over a year now I have been visiting this site, reading and learning about rationality, and meeting other rationalists sounds like a wonderfully positive experience. Sadly, there are no meetups in my area -- I looked at the RI skeptics society website, but their news page seemed focused on religious-people-bashing to a point that seemed mean and spiteful to me (at least at the time, it was awhile ago. Yes, we know people do dumb things because of religious beliefs; how about focusing on improving ourselves instead of pointing at them?).

Maybe there are a lot of others in the area like me who have been lurking on the site, longing for a chance to meet likeminded people but too shy to speak up. Of course, not all of them may be checking the discussions page but I'm not sure what else to do.

So, anyone out there in Rhode Island or close to the borders of Massachusetts and Connecticut that would like to start a local rationality meetup with me?

I am also interested in any advice for getting this to its target audience, as not everyone may be looking at the discussion page.

I am also also interested in anywhere I can talk with lesswrong folks in real-time -- it's hard to establish friendships through posts, and this discussion forum doesn't seem like the place for random chatter with people.
George Orwell's Prelude on Politics Is The Mind Killer
by  — 2012-03-29T16:27:09.729Z

I have found this most wonderful (if fairly lengthy) article, and thought you would enjoy having it brought to your attention.

It is so good, I think we should include it among the references in the "Politics is the Mind Killer" wiki page. But, before that, I submit it to you, and ask you: is there anything in this article that would warrant its exclusion from this site? I mean, besides the fact that it is about politics, and written by a notorious Social-democrat (And is that in itself grounds for exclusion?).
Meetup : Shanghai Less Wrong Meetup
by Patrick — 2012-03-29T10:37:04.015Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Shanghai Less Wrong Meetup

WHEN:
15 April 2012 10:36:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Shanghai

WHEN: 15 April 2012 01:00:00PM

WHERE: This is at a private residence, please private message 'Teddy' if you're joining. (This is China, it's got to be this way) I'm looking for any willing Shanghai Lesswrong readers to join this group if they haven't already. Up vote user Teddy in the comments below. This way I have karma to post to the meetup section without asking Patrick Robotham each time. This will help us boost members for the community here in Shanghai. The group has been meeting informally for awhile.. we have a good community here. If you'd like to join let me know.

Discussion article for the meetup : Shanghai Less Wrong Meetup
Alternate card types for Anki
by DavidLS — 2012-03-29T07:11:25.822Z

Recently I have started using Anki in a new and complimentary way. I am curious if any of you find it similarly useful and/or have other anki tips :)

The basic idea is that instead of putting down a challenge/response pair for facts, we put down a challenge/response pair for ways of thinking. A train of thought. Ideally, this is something akin to a lumosity.com game except tailored to your area of focus.

A simple example from algebra:

The fact based approach would be to make a card titled "what is the quadratic formula?" with the answer of "x == (-b +- Sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / 2a"

The way I am recommending is to make a card titled "derive the answer for ax^2 + bx + c == 0" with an answer that shows the steps. When shown the card, you would then either solve it in your head, or using a pad of paper. I assume that sub minute tasks are ideal.

The specific area I have been using this in is the study of algorithms, with challenges like "Hopcraft-Karp algorithm for bipartite matching", and it has so far proved very helpful at getting fluent with the names, deepening my understanding of the algorithms themselves, and with seeing new places to apply them in my coding.

This might be overstepping, but something like this seems like it might be appropriate for The Center for Modern Rationality. Something like "critique the logic of the following three sentences", or "Sue is about to buy a car. How should she go about making a decision".

This is my first real post to LessWrong, so if you have style corrections those are solicited alongside any comments on the post itself. Thanks!
Al Jazeera: "Engineering Human Evolution" -- 0h:35m:41s Youtube Video.
by Logos01 — 2012-03-29T03:00:08.753Z

Link here.

Al Jazeera website link for the video disinclined.

A brief synopsis from the Al Jazeera website:

Cyborgs, brain uploads and immortality - How far should science go in helping humans exceed their biological limitations? These ideas might sound like science fiction, but proponents of a movement known as transhumanism believe they are inevitable.
In this episode of The Stream, we talk to bioethicist George Dvorsky; Robin Hanson, a research associate with Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute; and Ari N. Schulman, senior editor of The New Atlantis, about the ethical implications of transhumanism.

Discuss below.
SotW: Check Consequentialism
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2012-03-29T01:35:13.161Z

(The Exercise Prize series of posts is the Center for Applied Rationality asking for help inventing exercises that can teach cognitive skills. The difficulty is coming up with exercises interesting enough, with a high enough hedonic return, that people actually do them and remember them; this often involves standing up and performing actions, or interacting with other people, not just working alone with an exercise booklet and a pencil. We offer prizes of $50 for any suggestion we decide to test, and $500 for any suggestion we decide to adopt. This prize also extends to LW meetup activities and good ideas for verifying that a skill has been acquired. See here for details.)

Exercise Prize: Check Consequentialism

In philosophy, "consequentialism" is the belief that doing the right thing makes the world a better place, i.e., that actions should be chosen on the basis of their probable outcomes. It seems like the mental habit of checking consequentialism, asking "What positive future events does this action cause?", would catch numerous cognitive fallacies.

For example, the mental habit of consequentialism would counter the sunk cost fallacy - if a PhD wouldn't really lead to much in the way of desirable job opportunities or a higher income, and the only reason you're still pursuing your PhD is that otherwise all your previous years of work will have been wasted, you will find yourself encountering a blank screen at the point where you try to imagine a positive future outcome of spending another two years working toward your PhD - you will not be able to state what good future events happen as a result.

Or consider the problem of living in the should-universe; if you're thinking, I'm not going to talk to my boyfriend about X because he should know it already, you might be able to spot this as an instance of should-universe thinking (planning/choosing/acting/feeling as though within / by-comparison-to an image of an ideal perfect universe) by having done exercises specifically to sensitize you to should-ness. Or, if you've practiced the more general skill of Checking Consequentialism, you might notice a problem on asking "What happens if I talk / don't talk to my boyfriend?" - providing that you're sufficiently adept to constrain your consequentialis...
[SEQ RERUN] Quantum Explanations
by MinibearRex — 2012-03-29T01:23:43.036Z

Today's post, Quantum Explanations was originally published on 09 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Quantum mechanics doesn't deserve its fearsome reputation. If you tell people something is supposed to be mysterious, they won't understand it. It's human intuitions that are "strange" or "weird"; physics itself is perfectly normal. Talking about historical erroneous concepts like "particles" or "waves" is just asking to confuse people; present the real, unified quantum physics straight out. The series will take a strictly realist perspective - quantum equations describe something that is real and out there. Warning: Although a large faction of physicists agrees with this, it is not universally accepted. Stronger warning: I am not even going to present non-realist viewpoints until later, because I think this is a major source of confusion.

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 Belief in the Implied Invisible, 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.
Brain Preservation
by jefftk — 2012-03-28T12:56:42.136Z

Most people, given the option to halt aging and continue in good heath for centuries, would. Anti-aging research is popular, but medicine is only minimally increasing lifespan for healthy adults. You, I, and everyone we know have bodies that are incredibly unlikely to make it past 120. They're just not built to last.

But what are you, really? Your personality, your memories, they don't leave you when you lose a leg. Lose most parts of your body and you're still you. Lose your brain and that's it. [1] You are a pattern, instantiated in the neurons of your brain. That pattern is sustained by your body, growing and changing as you learn and experience the world. Your body supports you for years, but it deteriorates and eventually isn't up to the task any more. Is that 'game over'?

Perhaps we could scan people's brains at extremely high detail so we could run them in some sort of human emulator. This requires a thorough understanding of the brain, huge amounts of storage, unbelievably fast computers, and very detailed scanning. If it's even possible, it may be several hundred years away.

Our bodies aren't going to last that long, but what if we could figure out how to preserve our brains so that the information didn't decay? Then, if the future turned out to be one in which we had advanced brain emulation and scanning technology, we could be revived. I don't know if people in the future would want to spend the time or money to revive us, but in a future with technology this advanced, reviving a preserved brain as a computer simulation could be really cheap.

The most advanced technology for long-term tissue preservation today [2] is cryonics: freezing with vitrification. You add something to the blood that keeps ice crystals from forming and then freeze it. This is pretty much the same thing frogs do, hibernating frozen through the winter. The biggest organs that have been successfully brought back to working order after vitrification are rabbit kidneys, and the brain is a lot bigger and much more complex. While there are people applying this technique to human brains after death, it's very much a one way street; we can't revive them with current technology.

How much should it worry us that we can't reverse this freezing process? If we're already talking about revival via high-detail scanning and emulation, which is only practical after hundreds of years of technologi...
Does anyone know any kid geniuses?
by Solvent — 2012-03-28T12:03:45.155Z

I'm friends with an incredibly smart kid. He's 14, but has been put up three grades in school at one point. He does all the obvious enrichment things which are available in the relatively small Australian city he lives in.

His life experience has been pretty unusual. He doesn't really know what it's like to be challenged in school. All his friends are way older than he is. (Once, I asked him how being constantly around people older than him made him feel. He replied, "Concerned for my future.")

He doesn't know anyone like him, which I think is a shame: he'd probably get along very well with them.

Does anyone know any similar kid geniuses? If so, can I give them my friend's details?

Thanks.
Should logical probabilities be updateless too?
by cousin_it — 2012-03-28T10:02:09.575Z

(This post doesn't require much math. It's very speculative and probably confused.)

Wei Dai came up with a problem that seems equivalent to a variant of Counterfactual Mugging with some added twists:

the coinflip is "logical", e.g. the parity of the millionth digit of pi;

after you receive the offer, you will have enough resources to calculate the coinflip's outcome yourself;

but you need to figure out the correct decision algorithm ahead of time, when you don't have these resources and are still uncertain about the coinflip's outcome.

If you give 50/50 chances now to the millionth digit of pi being even or odd, you probably want to write the decision algorithm so it agrees to pay up later even when faced with a proof that the millionth digit of pi is even. But from the decision algorithm's point of view, the situation looks more like being asked to pay up because 2+2=4. How do we resolve this tension?

One of the main selling points of TDT-style decision theories is eliminating the need for precommitment. You're supposed to always do what you would have precommitted to doing, even if it doesn't seem like a very good idea after you've done your Bayesian updates. UDT solves Counterfactual Mugging and similar problems by being "updateless", so you keep caring about possible worlds in accordance with their apriori probabilities regardless of which world you end up in.

If we take the above problem at face value, it seems to tell us that UDT should treat logical uncertainty updatelessly too, and keep caring about logically impossible worlds in accordance with their apriori logical probabilities. It seems to hint that UDT should be coded from the start with a "logical prior" over mathematical statements, which encodes the creator's arbitrary "logical degrees of caring", just like its regular prior encodes the creator's arbitrary degrees of caring over physics. Then the AI must keep following that prior forever after. But that's a very tall order. Should you really keep caring about logically impossible worlds where 2+2=5, and accept bargains that help copies of you in such worlds, even after you calculate that 2+2=4?

That conclusion is pretty startling, but consider what happens if you reject it:

Precommitment can be modeled as a decision problem where an AI is asked to write a successor AI.

Imagine the AI is asked to write a program P that will be fa

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Meetup : Big Berkeley meetup
by Nisan — 2012-03-28T03:42:44.528Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Big Berkeley meetup

WHEN:
04 April 2012 06:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
2071 University Ave, Berkeley, CA

This will be a joint dinner with the MPHD seminar folks. We'll meet at Taiwan Restaurant on University Avenue.

Discussion article for the meetup : Big Berkeley meetup
[SEQ RERUN] Belief in the Implied Invisible
by MinibearRex — 2012-03-28T03:22:42.854Z

Today's post, Belief in the Implied Invisible was originally published on 08 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

That it's impossible even in principle to observe something sometimes isn't enough to conclude that it doesn't exist.

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 GAZP vs. GLUT, 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.
Common mistakes people make when thinking about decision theory
by cousin_it — 2012-03-27T20:03:08.340Z

From my experience reading and talking about decision theory on LW, it seems that many of the unproductive comments in these discussions can be attributed to a handful of common mistakes.

Mistake #1: Arguing about assumptions

The main reason why I took so long to understand Newcomb's Problem and Counterfactual Mugging was my insistence on denying the assumptions behind these puzzles. I could have saved months if I'd just said to myself, okay, is this direction of inquiry interesting when taken on its own terms?

Many assumptions seemed to be divorced from real life at first. People dismissed the study of electromagnetism as an impractical toy, and considered number theory hopelessly abstract until cryptography arrived. The only way to make intellectual progress (either individually or as a group) is to explore the implications of interesting assumptions wherever they might lead. Unfortunately people love to argue about assumptions instead of getting anything done, though they can't really judge before exploring the implications in detail.

Several smart people on LW are repeating my exact mistake about Newcomb's Problem now, and others find ways to commit the same mistake when looking at our newer ideas. It's so frustrating and uninteresting to read yet another comment saying my assumptions look unintuitive or unphysical or irrelevant to FAI or whatever. I'm not against criticism, but somehow such comments never blossom into interesting conversations, and that's reason enough to caution you against the way of thinking that causes them.

Mistake #2: Stopping when your idea seems good enough

There's a handful of ideas that decision theory newbies rediscover again and again, like pointing out indexical uncertainty as the solution to Newcomb's problem, or adding randomness to models of UDT to eliminate spurious proofs. These ideas don't work and don't lead anywhere interesting, but that's hard to notice when you just had the flash of insight and want to share it with the world.

A good strategy in such situations is to always push a little bit past the point where you have everything figured out. Take one extra step and ask yourself: "Can I make this idea precise?" What are the first few implications? What are the obvious extensions? If your result seems to contradict what's already known, work through some of the contradictions yourself. If you don't find any mis...