trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
On the importance of taking limits: Infinite Spheres of Utility
by aspera — 2013-10-12T21:18:54.754Z

I had a discussion recently with some Less Wrongers about a decision problem involving infinities, which appears to have a paradoxical solution. We have been warned by Jaynes and others to be careful about taking the proper limits when infinities are involved in a problem, and I thought this would be a good example to show that we can get answers that make sense out of problems that seem not to.

The problem is the "Infinite Spheres of Utility." To quote a description from Philosophy et cetera,

Imagine a universe containing infinitely many immortal people, partitioned into two "spheres". In one sphere [sphere A], all the inhabitants live a blissful existence, whereas the members of the other sphere [sphere B] suffer unbearable agony. Now compare the following two variations:

Everyone starts off in the blissful sphere. But each day, one more person gets permanently transferred across to the agony sphere, where they reside for the rest of eternity.

Everyone starts off in the agony sphere. But each day, one more person gets permanently transferred across to the blissful sphere, where they reside for the rest of eternity.

At first consideration, the problem appears to cause a paradox:

Which scenario is better? The answer, paradoxically, appears to be "both".

At any moment in time, there will be infinitely many people in the original sphere, and only a finite number who have been transferred across. So option 1 is better.

However, each particular person will spend only a finite amount of time in the first sphere, whereas they will spend an eternity in their post-transfer home. So option 2 is better.

Given these reasonable but hard-to-reconcile viewpoints, how do we make a decision?

Deciding how to decide

We first need to decide which kind of decision analysis we want to use to choose a starting sphere. For example, we might simply have an arbitrary preference for putting everyone in the bad sphere. Paradox over. Even if we want to use a form of utilitarianism, we have more than one type to choose from. One of the simplest and most intuitive is additive utilitarianism, in which we define a utility for each person, add them all together, and make the choice with the larger total utility. We can think of the paradox above as resulting from our insistence that the solution conform to this kind of decision analysis: it appears that there s...
Interesting critique of British education by outgoing advisor (warning: some politics)
by bramflakes — 2013-10-12T16:43:27.012Z

The soon-to-be-resigning Dominic Cummings, advisor to the Education Secretary of the Coalition government, has released a 250-page manifesto describing the problems of the British educational establishment ("the blob" in Whitehall parlance) and offering solutions. I post this here because both his analysis and recommendations are likely to be interesting to LW, in particular an increased emphasis on STEM, broader knowledge of the limits of human reasoning and how they relate to managing complex systems, an appreciation for "agenty"-ness in organizational leadership, whole-brain emulation, intelligence enhancement, recursive self-improving AGI, analysis of human interactions on a firm evolutionary-psychological basis, and a rejection of fashionable pseudoscientific theories of psychology and society. Relevant extracts:

This essay is aimed mainly at ~15-25 year-olds and those interested in more ambitious education and training for them. Not only are most of them forced into mediocre education but they are also then forced into dysfunctional institutions where many face awful choices: either conform to the patterns set by middle-aged mediocrities (don’t pursue excellence, don’t challenge bosses’ errors, and so on) or soon be despised and unemployed. Some of the ideas sketched here may help some to shape their own education and create their own institutions. As people such as Linus Torvald (Linux) or Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) have shown, the young are capable of much more than the powerful and middle-aged, who control so many institutions, like to admit.2 A signiﬁcant change in education and training could also help us partly ameliorate the grim cycle of predictable political dysfunction.

Although it is generally psychologically unpleasant to focus on our problems and admit the great weaknesses of our institutions, including what we in politics and our leaders do not understand, it is only through honest analysis that progress is possible. As Maxwell said, ‘Thoroughly conscious ignorance is a prelude to every real advance in knowledge.’ Reliable knowledge about what works (how do people learn, what teaching methods work, how to use technology) should be built cumulatively on the foundation of empirical tests as suggested by physicist Carl Wieman and others (cf. Section 6 and Endnote). New systems and curricula would wor

...
How habits work and how you may control them
by Kaj_Sotala — 2013-10-12T12:17:42.908Z

Some highlights from The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life And Business by Charles Duhigg, a book which seems like an invaluable resource for pretty much everyone who wants to improve their lives. The below summarizes the first three chapters of the book, as well as the appendix, for I found those to be the most valuable and generally applicable parts. These chapters discuss individual habits, while the rest of the book discusses the habits of companies and individuals. The later chapters also contain plenty of interesting content (some excerpts: [1 2 3]), and help explain the nature of e.g. some institutional failures.

(See also two previous LW discussions on an online article by the author of the book.)

Chapter One: The Habit Loop - How Habits Work

When a rat first navigates a foreign environment, such as a maze, its brain is full of activity as it works to process the new environment and to learn all the environmental cues. As the environment becomes more familiar, the rat's brain becomes less and less active, until even brain structures related to memory quiet down a week later. Navigating the maze no longer requires higher processing: it has become an automatic habit.

The process of converting a complicated sequence of actions into an automatic routine is known as "chunking", and human brains carry out a similar process. They vary in complexity, from putting toothpaste on your toothbrush before putting it in your mouth, to getting dressed or preparing breakfast, to very complicated processes such as backing one's car out of the driveway. All of these actions initially required considerable effort to learn, but eventually they became so automatic as to be carried out without conscious attention. As soon as we identify the right cue, such as pulling out the car keys, our brain activates the stored habit and lets our conscious minds focus on something else. In order to conserve effort, the brain will attempt to turn almost any routine into a habit.

However, it can be dangerous to deactivate our brains at the wrong time, for there may be something unanticipated in the environment that will turn a previously-safe routine into something life-threatening. To help avoid such situations, our brains evaluate prospective habits using a three-stage habit loop:

From behind a partition, for instance, it’s difficult for a rat to know if it’s inside

...
Meetup : Washington DC: Jobs/project show and tell
by rocurley — 2013-10-12T06:26:16.687Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Jobs/project show and tell

WHEN:
13 October 2013 03:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
Ballston Common mall

We'll be meeting to tell each other about the things we're working on. (I think this would segue well into doing another quick goals discussion).

Thanks to the government shutdown, we're still meeting in Ballston, in the food court.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC: Jobs/project show and tell
Does the simulation argument even need simulations?
by lmm — 2013-10-11T21:16:20.596Z

The simulation argument, as I understand it:

Subjectively, existing as a human in the real, physical universe is indistinguishable from existing as a simulated human in a simulated universe

Anthropically, there is no reason to privilege one over the other: if there exist k real humans and l simulated humans undergoing one's subjective experience, one's odds of being a real human are k/(k+l)

Any civilization capable of simulating a universe is quite likely to simulate an enormous number of them

Even if most capable civilizations simulate only a few universes for e.g. ethical reasons, civilizations that have no such concerns could simulate such enormous numbers of universes that the expected number of universes simulated by any simulation-capable civilization is still huge

Our present civilization is likely to reach the point where it can simulate a universe reasonably soon

By 3. and 4., there exist (at some point in history) huge numbers of simulated universes, and therefore huge numbers of simulated humans living in simulated universes

By 2. and 5., our odds of being real humans are tiny (unless we reject 4, by assuming that humanity will never reach the stage of running such simulations)

When we talk about a simulation we're usually thinking of a computer; crudely, we'd represent the universe as a giant array of bytes in RAM, and have some enormously complicated program that could compute the next state of the simulated universe from the previous one[1]. Fundamentally, we're just storing one big number, then performing a calculation and store another number, and so on. In fact our program is simply another number (witness the DeCSS "illegal prime"). This is effectively the GLUT concept applied to the whole universe.

But numbers are just... numbers. If we have a computer calculating the fibonacci sequence, it's hard to see that running the calculating program makes this sequence any more real than if we had just conceptualized the rule[2] - or even, to a mathematical Platonist, if we'd never thought of it at all. And we do know the rule (modulo having a theory of quantum gravity), and the initial state of the universe is (to the best of our knowledge) small and simple enough that we could describe it, or another similar but subtly different universe, in terms small enough to write down. At that point, what we have seems in some sense to be a simulat...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2013-10-11T16:08:30.516Z

This summary was posted to LW main on October 4th. The following week's summary is here.

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Atlanta Lesswrong: October Meetup (First of Two): 06 October 2013 06:00PM
Berlin: Fermi paradox discussion: 18 October 2013 07:00PM
Chicago Open Discussion: 05 October 2013 03:00PM
Frankfurt (including effective altruism presentation): 27 October 2013 02:00PM
Helsinki Meetup: 06 October 2013 02:00PM
Munich Meetup in October: 05 October 2013 03:00PM
Paris Meetup: Sunday, October 6: New people, games...: 06 October 2013 02:00PM
Philadelphia - What Bayesianism taught me: 06 October 2013 01:00PM
Tucson Meetup: 12 October 2013 02:00PM

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

Austin, TX: 05 October 2019 01:30PM
Columbus, OH MEGA-MEETUP, Oct 11-14: 12 October 2013 02:33AM
Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 87-89: 05 October 2013 12:00PM
Washington DC fun and games meetup: 06 October 2013 03:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Research Triangle NC, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

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 o...
Brain Training to maximize returns
by Goobahman — 2013-10-11T01:23:42.611Z

Hi Everyone,
Australia's ABC has recently broadcast a new series called 'Redesign my Brain' with Todd Sampson.
The series seeks to explore how much the brain can be improved in areas like memory and recognition. After just one month of training Todd found himself performing considerably better on tests then he had prior.
He also competed in the World Memorization Championships, and watched a bloke in Germany play 12 games of chess simultaneously without seeing any of the boards.
So other than being a fun show to watch, it got me thinking about the advantages of brain training.
I've had a look at some stuff like dual-n-back, luminosity, and other brain training programs, but I've failed to really explore how much utility such training has.

One of the memory champions was able to remember the order of 25 decks of cards in one hour. But it didn't seem like his ability didn't do much to improve his life beyond providing a fun and enjoyable hobby.
So I'd like to ask:
Which areas of cognitive training do you think would have the best returns in terms of life optimization?
And what do you think would be the best way to go about that training?
Would love to hear some success stories.
The selfish reason to write something for Ada Lovelace Day
by sixes_and_sevens — 2013-10-10T22:28:48.005Z

Last October there was a discussion post on Ada Lovelace Day, and it met with something of a lukewarm reception. Fair enough. There are legitimate criticisms of this particular blogosphere event, and people are welcome to subscribe to those criticisms, or not, as they see fit. Personally, I'm quite fond of Ada Lovelace Day, in no small part because I get a chance to write about one of my nerdy interests in a public place with a reasonable expectation that a lay audience will attempt to engage with it. This year, the occasion falls on October 15th, and as a result I'm currently drafting a short piece on Esther Duflo, a development economist responsible for pioneering randomised controlled trials of policy interventions in developing countries. She's rather prolific, has a shelf full of academic awards, and is a hot tip for a Nobel Memorial Prize over the next few years or so.

So I was thinking about this: I get to talk about the importance of randomised controlled trials in policy-making; I get to talk about evidence-based philanthropy; I get to wrap it up with a don't-put-mustard-on-the-cat closing message of how it's not enough to just care about an issue, you have to be informed on it as well, (and by the way, there's this thing called "effective altruism" you might want to look up); and I can expect a reasonable number of readers to actually engage with it, because it's ostensibly written about the work of an interesting woman on Ada Lovelace Day.

You can probably see where I'm going with this by now.

Whether or not you think it's valuable to publicise the work of women in STEM, it is an excellent opportunity to sneak assorted pro-rationality memes under the radar to an audience that wouldn't necessarily engage with them otherwise. Less Wrong has a lot of eloquent people with knowledge across a wide assortment of different domains. I'm curious as to what we could come up with if we made a concerted effort to do this.

For that matter (and Harry Potter fanfic aside), it's an interesting question as to what other popular internet phenomena can be co-opted for this purpose.
A Voting Puzzle, Some Political Science, and a Nerd Failure Mode
by ChrisHallquist — 2013-10-10T02:10:48.519Z

In grade school, I read a series of books titled Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar, who you may know as the author of the novel Holes which was made into a movie in 2003. The series included two books of math problems, Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School and More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School, the latter of which included the following problem (paraphrased):

The students have Mrs. Jewl's class have been given the privilege of voting on the height of the school's new flagpole. She has each of them write down what they think would be the best hight for the flagpole. The votes are distributed as follows:

1 student votes for 6 feet.

1 student votes for 10 feet.

7 students vote for 25 feet.

1 student votes for 30 feet.

2 students vote for 50 feet.

2 students vote for 60 feet.

1 student votes for 65 feet.

3 students vote for 75 feet.

1 student votes for 80 feet, 6 inches.

4 students vote for 85 feet.

1 student votes for 91 feet.

5 students vote for 100 feet.

At first, Mrs. Jewls declares 25 feet the winning answer, but one of the students who voted for 100 feet convinces her there should be a runoff between 25 feet and 100 feet. In the runoff, each student votes for the height closest to their original answer. But after that round of voting, one of the students who voted for 85 feet wants their turn, so 85 feet goes up against the winner of the previous round of voting, and the students vote the same way, with each student voting for the height closest to their original answer. Then the same thing happens again with the 50 foot option. And so on, with each number, again and again, "very much like a game of tether ball."

Question: if this process continues until it settles on an answer that can't be beaten by any other answer, how tall will the new flagpole be?

Answer (rot13'd): fvkgl-svir srrg, orpnhfr gung'f gur zrqvna inyhr bs gur bevtvany frg bs ibgrf. Naq abj lbh xabj gur fgbel bs zl svefg rapbhagre jvgu gur zrqvna ibgre gurberz.

Why am I telling you this? There's a minor reason and a major reason. The minor reason is that this shows it is possible to explain little-known academic concepts, at least certain ones, in a way that grade schoolers will understand. It's a data point that fits nicely with what Eliezer has written about how to explain things. The major reason, though, is that a month ago I finished my syst...
Meetup : Complex problems, limited information, and rationality; How should we make decisions in real life?
by Davidmanheim — 2013-10-09T21:44:19.773Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Complex problems, limited information, and rationality; How should we make decisions in real life?

WHEN:
16 October 2013 07:00:45PM (-0700)

WHERE:
West Los Angeles (At the Westside Tavern Upstair Wine Bar)

Most decisions we make involve complex, poorly understood systems. We'd like to be rational anyways, but how?

Example time:
I am going to pre-commit here to biking to the meetup. Why? I believe that more exercise would increase my physical fitness in ways that are beneficial.

But... I haven't done the research into the benefits of physical fitness, and haven't done a tradeoff analysis of time costs versus benefits, I don't know how likely dangerous biking accidents are in LA, I don't know enough about my body to be sure that biking is safe, or a useful way for me to get in shape. Should I spend the week until the meetup researching these factors and building a model, or should I spend time getting work and homework done, playing with my kid, and sleeping? Through a combination of trusting experts, laziness, and other things to do, I'm not going to do the research.

And that's where we are with most decisions. What should we do, if we want to be rational? I have some ideas, some questions, and some willingness to shut up and listen to others, and I might even update my beliefs if others have ideas I like.

Discussion article for the meetup : Complex problems, limited information, and rationality; How should we make decisions in real life?
Advice for a smart 8-year-old bored with school 
by James_Miller — 2013-10-09T19:19:40.795Z

Although my 8-year-old son likes his teacher, he is frequently bored at school. He attends a high quality suburban public school in the United States. He has a lot of traits in common with LessWrong readers, and we would like advice for what he can do to counter his boredom. Many of you must have found grade school more or less tedious. What were your coping strategies?
Meetup : Helsinki Meetup
by mikko — 2013-10-09T16:44:07.914Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup

WHEN:
20 October 2013 03:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE:
Jämeräntaival 3, 02150 Espoo, Finland

How to find us: We’re meeting in Takkakabinetti in Otaniemi. You can find the room by following the signs inside the building.

The theme of this meetup will be habits. Kaj Sotala will give us an introduction to the subject, after which we’ll discuss habit formation in smaller groups.

Related reading:

Rationality habits

Productivity habits

Common failure modes in habit formation

Discussion article for the meetup : Helsinki Meetup
Meetup : Durham NC/Triangle Area: Meeetup!
by therufs — 2013-10-09T14:03:19.000Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham NC/Triangle Area: Meeetup!

WHEN:
10 October 2013 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
420 West Geer St., Durham NC 27701

Discussion meetup!

Topics:

Instinctive Frequentists, the Outside View, and de-Biasing

And continuation of last meetup's discussion (prompted by Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality) of how emotional awareness relates to rationality. Specifically we'd like to incorporate more opportunities for reflection and discussion of emotions into meetups, so please bring ideas ways we could do this!

Meet at 7 at Cocoa Cinnamon (unless there is another loud musical event going on, in which case we will choose another venue on Rigsbee.)

Beverages to follow at either Motorco or Fullsteam.

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham NC/Triangle Area: Meeetup!
Meetup : Moscow, Beliefs 2
by Yuu — 2013-10-09T07:19:40.046Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow, Beliefs 2

WHEN:
13 October 2013 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

We will continue working with beliefs. So please take your notes from the last gathering. If you did not come please think about beliefs you have, write some of them down and bring this notes to the meet up.

We will do improved Belief Investigation exercise, and try some new exercises to analyse beliefs further.

Please take into account that we still have Prediction Market and we started Scavenger Hunt recently. You can follow the corresponding links to the discussions on the Russian forum.

If you are going for the first time:
We gather in the Yandex office, you need the second revolving door with the sign “Яндекс”, here is the photo of the entrance you need. You need to pass the first entrance and the bicycle parking on you way. Here is additional guide how to get there: link.

You can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information.

We start at 16:00 and sometimes finish at night.

Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow, Beliefs 2