trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
GCRI: Updated Strategy and AMA on EA Forum next Tuesday
by RyanCarey — 2015-02-23T12:35:13.450Z

Just announcing for those interested that Seth Baum from the Global Catastrophic Risks Institute (GCRI) will be coming to the Effective Altruism Forum to answer a wide range of questions (like a Reddit "Ask Me Anything") next week at 7pm US ET on March 3.

Seth is an interesting case - more of a 'mere mortal' than Bostrom and Yudkowsky. (Clarification: his background is more standard, and he's probably more emulate-able!). He had a PhD in geography, and had come to a maximising consequentialist view, in which GCR-reduction is overwhelmingly important. So three years ago, with risk analyst Tony Barrett, he cofounded the Global Catstrophic Risks Institute - one of the handful of places working on these particularly important problems. Since then, it's done some academic outreach and have covered issues like double-catastrophe/ recovery from catstrophe, bioengineering, food security and AI.

Just last week, they've updated their strategy, giving the following announcement:

Dear friends,

I am delighted to announce important changes in GCRI’s identity and direction. GCRI is now just over three years old. In these years we have learned a lot about how we can best contribute to the issue of global catastrophic risk. Initially, GCRI aimed to lead a large global catastrophic risk community while also performing original research. This aim is captured in GCRI’s original mission statement, to help mobilize the world’s intellectual and professional resources to meet humanity’s gravest threats.

Our community building has been successful, but our research has simply gone farther. Our research has been published in leading academic journals. It has taken us around the world for important talks. And it has helped us publish in the popular media. GCRI will increasingly focus on in-house research.

Our research will also be increasingly focused, as will our other activities. The single most important GCR research question is: What are the best ways to reduce the risk of global catastrophe? To that end, GCRI is launching a GCR Integrated Assessment as our new flagship project. The Integrated Assessment puts all the GCRs into one integrated study in order to assess the best ways of reducing the risk. And we are changing our mission statement accordingly, to develop the best ways to confront humanity’s gravest threats.

So 7pm ET Tuesday, March ...
Announcing LessWrong Digest
by Evan_Gaensbauer — 2015-02-23T10:41:43.194Z

I've been making rounds on social media with the following message.

Great content on LessWrong isn't as frequent as it used to be, so not as many people read it as frequently. This makes sense. However, I read it at least once every two days for personal interest. So, I'm starting a LessWrong/Rationality Digest, which will be a summary of all posts or comments exceeding 20 upvotes within a week. It will be like a newsletter. Also, it's a good way for those new to LessWrong to learn cool things without having to slog through online cultural baggage. It will never be more than once weekly. If you're curious here is a sample of what the Digest will be like.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e2mHi7W0H2toWPNooSq7QNjEhx_xa0LcLw_NZRfkPPk/edit

Also, major blog posts or articles from related websites, such as Slate Star Codex and Overcoming Bias, or publications from the MIRI, may be included occasionally. If you want on the list send an email to:

lesswrongdigest *at* gmail *dot* com

Users of LessWrong itself have noticed this 'decline' in frequency of quality posts on LessWrong. It's not necessarily a bad thing, as much of the community has migrated to other places, such as Slate Star Codex, or even into meatspace with various organizations, meetups, and the like. In a sense, the rationalist community outgrew LessWrong as a suitable and ultimate nexus. Anyway, I thought you as well would be interested in a LessWrong Digest. If you or your friends:

find articles in 'Main' are too infrequent, and Discussion only filled with announcements, open threads, and housekeeping posts, to bother checking LessWrong regularly, or,

are busying themselves with other priorities, and are trying to limit how distracted they are by LessWrong and other media

the LessWrong Digest might work for you, and as a suggestion for your friends. I've fielded suggestions I transform this into a blog, Tumblr, or other format suitable for RSS Feed. Almost everyone is happy with email format right now, but if a few people express an interest in a blog or RSS format, I can make that happen too.
Open thread, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1, 2015
by MrMind — 2015-02-23T08:01:54.927Z

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Are Cognitive Load and Willpower drawn from the same pool?
by avichapman — 2015-02-23T02:46:56.660Z

I was recently reading a blog here, that referenced a paper done in 1999 by Baba Shiv and Alex Fedorikhin (Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making). In it, volunteers are asked to memorise short or long numbers and then asked to chose a snack as a reward. The snack is either fruit or cake. The actual paper seems to go into a lot of details that are irrelevent to the blog post, but doesn't actually seem to contradict anything the blog post says. The result seems to be that those with a higher cognitive load were far more likely to chose the cake than those who weren't.

I was wondering if anyone has read any further on this line of research? The actual experiment seems to imply that the connection between cognitive load and willpower may be an acute effect - possibly not lasting very long. The choice of snack is made seconds after memorising a number and while actively trying to keep the number in memory for short term recall a few minutes later. There doesn't seem to be anything about the effect on willpower minutes or hours later.

Does anyone know if the effect lasts longer than a few seconds? If so, I would be interested in whether this affect has been incorporated into any dieting strategies.
How to debate when authority is questioned, but really not needed?
by  — 2015-02-23T01:44:53.424Z

Especially in the comments of political articles or about economic issues I find myself arguing with people who question my authority about a topic rather than refute my arguments.

----

Examples may be:

1:

Me: I think money printing by the Fed will cause inflation if they continue like this.

Random commenter: Are you an economist?

Me: I am not, but it's not relevant.

Random commenter: Ok, so you are clueless.

2:

Me: The current strategy to fight terror is not working because ISIS is growing.

Random commenter: What would you do to stop terrorism?

Me: I have an idea of what I would do, but it's not relevant because I'm not an expert, but do you think the current strategy is working?

Random commenter: So you don't know what you are talking about.

----

It is not about my opinions above, or even if I am right or not, I would gladly change my opinion after a debate, but I think that I am being disqualified unfairly.

If I am right, how should I answer or continue these conversations?
Meetup : Prague - setting up
by kotrfa — 2015-02-22T11:44:18.997Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Prague - setting up

WHEN:
23 March 2015 07:30:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Václavské náměstí 778/14, Praha 110 00

Hello,

this is second long-term planed meetup in Prague.

We are currently in the beginning of creating a core group here hence be prepared for that - we haven't established any plan, purpose, program or rules yet. We all are open meeting new interesting people and even if you just want to hang out with us, don't hesitate to come!

You can recognize us by having paper with "LW" on it on our table.

Besides this meeting, we are also meeting more frequently (once a 1-2 weeks). You are very welcome - just send me a message here on LW and I will inform you about current plans and add you to our group with additional info.

Report from the first meetup http://lesswrong.com/lw/lql/czechs_first_meetup_in_prague_report/

Discussion article for the meetup : Prague - setting up
Request: Sequences book reading group
by iarwain1 — 2015-02-22T01:06:42.912Z

The book version of the Sequences is supposed to be published in the next month or two, if I understand correctly. I would really enjoy an online reading group to go through the book together.

Reasons for a reading group:

It would give some of us the motivation to actually go through the Sequences finally.

I have frequently had thoughts or questions on some articles in the Sequences, but I refrained from commenting because I assumed it would be covered in a later article or because I was too intimidated to ask a stupid question. A reading group would hopefully assume that many of the readers would be new to the Sequences, so asking a question or making a comment without knowing the later articles would not appear stupid.

It may even bring back a bit of the blog-style excitement of the "old" LW ("I wonder what exciting new thoughts are going to be posted today?") that many have complained has been missing since the major contributors stopped posting.

I would recommend one new post per day, going in order of the book. I recommend re-posting the entire article to LW, including any edits or additions that are new in the book. Obviously this would require permission from the copyright holder (who is that? is there even going to be a copyright at all?), but I'm hoping that'll be fine.

I'd also recommend trying to make the barriers to entry as low as possible. As noted above, this means allowing people to ask questions / make comments without being required to have already read the later articles. Also, I suggest that people not be required to read all the comments from the original article. If something has already been discussed or if you think a particular comment from the original discussion was very important, then just link to it or quote it.

Finally, I think it would be very useful if some of the more knowledgeable LW members could provide links and references to the corresponding "traditional" academic literature on each article.

Unfortunately, for various reasons I am unwilling to take responsibility for such a reading group. If you are willing to take on this responsibility, please post a comment to that effect below.

Thanks!
Can we decrease the risk of worse-than-death outcomes following brain preservation? 
by Synaptic — 2015-02-21T22:58:15.454Z

Content note: discussion of things that are worse than death

Over the past few years, a few people have claimed rejection of cryonics due to concerns that they might be revived into a world that they preferred less than being dead or not existing. For example, lukeprog pointed this out in a LW comment here, and Julia Galef expressed similar sentiments in a comment on her blog here.

I use brain preservation rather than cryonics here, because it seems like these concerns are technology-platform agnostic.

To me one solution is that it seems possible to have an "out-clause": circumstances under which you'd prefer to have your preservation/suspension terminated.

Here's how it would work: you specify, prior to entering biostasis, circumstances in which you'd prefer to have your brain/body be taken out of stasis. Then, if those circumstances are realized, the organization carries out your request.

This almost certainly wouldn't solve all of the potential bad outcomes, but it ought to help some. Also, it requires that you enumerate some of the circumstances in which you'd prefer to have your suspension terminated.

While obvious, it seems worth pointing out that there's no way to decrease the probability of worse-than-death outcomes to 0%. Although this also is the case for currently-living people (i.e. people whose brains are not necessarily preserved could also experience worse-than-death outcomes and/or have their lifespan extended against their wishes).

For people who are concerned about this, I have three main questions:

1) Do you think that an opt-out clause is a useful-in-principle way to address your concerns?

2) If no to #1, is there some other mechanism that you could imagine which would work?

3) Can you enumerate some specific world-states that you think could lead to revival in a worse-than-death state? (Examples: UFAI is imminent, or a malevolent dictator's army is about to take over the world.)
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Verified Debating
by rocurley — 2015-02-21T20:07:44.040Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Verified Debating

WHEN:
23 February 2015 06:15:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
1061 Market St #4, San Francisco, CA 94103

THE MEETUP HAS MOVED THROUGH SPACE TO THE APP ACADEMY OFFICE, AND THROUGH TIME TO 6:15.

We'll be meeting for verified debating: a debate where you must state your opponent's position in a form they approve of before taking your turn.

If you have any problems, feel free to give me a call at 301-458-0764. Feel free to show up late.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Verified Debating
Rationality promoted by the American Humanist Association
by Gleb_Tsipursky — 2015-02-21T19:28:41.696Z

Happy to share that I got to discuss rationality-informed thinking strategies on the American Humanist Association's well-known and popular podcast, the Humanist Hour (here's the link to the interview). Now, this was aimed at secular audiences, so even before the interview the hosts steered me to orient specifically toward what they thought the audience would find valuable. Thus, the interview focused more on secular issues, such as finding meaning and purpose from a science-based perspective. Still, I got to talk about map and territory and other rationality strategies, as well as cognitive biases such as planning fallacy and sunken costs. So I'd call that a win. I'd appreciate any feedback from you all on how to optimize the way I present rationality-informed strategies in future media appearances.
Meetup : Singapore Meetup Group
by MixedNuts — 2015-02-21T12:48:38.181Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Singapore Meetup Group

WHEN:
01 March 2015 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
East Coast Park, next to the beach, at The Amber Beacon Tower, Singapore

There will be a meetup on March 1.

Time: 2pm until ???

Location: East Coast Park, next to the beach, at The Amber Beacon Tower* (Google Street View, more diagrammatic map) The tower is near Parkland Green, where people could get food before or after.

Activity: Loose socializing and discussion. If you have something you know you'd like to talk about, feel to post a blurb or relevant link here.

The meetup organiser is particularly interested to talk to people about how to decide when to gather more information versus act on the information one already has (which may be known to be inaccurate). This boils down to how to calculate an expected value of information gathering. Of course, by March 1 he might be onto something else.

*The Amber Beacon Tower is also known as the Yellow Tower, and is purportedly haunted by a murder victim.

Note: I can't convince the automatic Google Maps thing (here underneath) to show the right place (coordinates are 1.298176,103.905926), if you know what I should put into the "Location" field to make it do that, please tell me.

Discussion article for the meetup : Singapore Meetup Group
The Role of Physics in UDT: Part I
by Squark — 2015-02-21T10:51:37.958Z

Followup to: Anatomy of Multiversal Utility Functions: Tegmark Level IV

Outline: In the previous post, I discussed the properties of utility functions in the extremely general setting of the Tegmark level IV multiverse. In the current post, I am going to show how the discovery of a theory of physics allows the agent performing a certain approximation in its decision theory. I'm doing this with an eye towards analyzing decision theory and utility calculus in universes governed by realistic physical theories (quantum mechanics, general relativity, eternal inflation...)

A Naive Approach

Previously, we have used the following expression for the expected utility:

[1]

Since the integral is over the entire "level IV multiverse" (the space of binary sequences), [1] makes no reference to a specific theory of physics. On the other hand, a realistic agent is usually expected to use its observations to form theories about the universe it inhabits, subsequently optimizing its action with respect to the theory.

Since this process crucially depend on observations, we need to make the role of observations explicit. Since we assume the agent uses some version of UDT, we are not supposed to update on observations, instead evaluating the logical conditional expectation values

[2]

Here is the agent, is a potential policy for the agent (mapping from sensory inputs to actions) and is expectation value with respect to logical uncertainty.

Now suppose made observations leading it to postulate physical theory . For the sake of simplicity, we suppose is only deciding its actions in the universes in which observations were made1. Thus, we assume that the input space factors as and we're only interested in inputs in the set . This simplification leads to replacing [2] by

[3]

where is a "partial" policy referring to the -universe only.

The discovery of allows to perform a certain approximation of [2']. A naive guess of the form of the approximation is

[4']

Here, is a constant representing the contributions of the universes in which is not valid (whose logical-uncertainty correlation with we neglect) and is a measure on corresponding to . Now, physical theories in the real world often speci...
Weekly LW Meetups
by FrankAdamek — 2015-02-21T06:32:38.883Z

This summary was posted to LW Main on February 13th. The following week's summary is here.

New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in:

Czech's first Meetup Prague: 16 February 2015 06:00PM

Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:

Atlanta February Meetup - Relationships: 15 February 2015 07:00PM
European Community Weekend 2015: 12 June 2015 12:00PM
[Frankfurt] Another Frankfurt meetup: 22 February 2015 02:00PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Present the charity you'd like to give to: 01 March 2015 02:00PM
Effective Altruism Netherlands: Effective Altruism for the masses: 15 March 2015 02:00PM
[Netherlands] Effective Altruism Netherlands: Small concrete actions you could take: 29 March 2015 01:00PM
Paris Meetup: 14 February 2015 02:00PM
Warsaw February Meetup: 21 February 2015 06:00PM

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 - Caffe Medici: 14 February 2026 01:30PM
Brussels February meetup: Words: 14 February 2015 01:00PM
Canberra Less Wrong Meet Up - Favourite Sequence Post + Discussion: 14 February 2015 06:00PM
Moscow meetup: The Toulmin model of argument, belief investigation exercise, psycholinguistics: 15 February 2015 02:00PM
Seattle Sequences group: Mysterious Answers 1: 16 February 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Meetup - February: 25 February 2015 06:30PM
Sydney Rationality Dojo - Optimising Skill Training: 01 March 2015 04:00PM
[Sydney] HPMOR Wrap Party! - Sydney Edition: 15 March 2015 06:00PM
Vienna: 21 February 2015 03:00PM
Washington, D.C.: Book Swap: 15 February 2015 03:00PM
West LA—Sphexishness and Meta-Sphexishness: 18 February 2015 07:00PM

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buffalo, Cambridge UK, Canberra, Columbus, London, Madison WI, Melbourne, Moscow, Mountain View, New York, Philadelphia, Research Triangle NC, Seattle, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Vienna, Washington DC, 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 he...
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108
by b_sen — 2015-02-20T21:53:55.900Z

New long chapter! Since I expect its discussion to generate more than 160 comments (which would push the previous thread over the 500 comment limit) before the next chapter is posted, here is a new thread.

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 108 (and chapter 109, once it comes out on Monday).

EDIT: There have now been two separate calls for having one thread per chapter, along with a poll in this thread. If the poll in this thread indicates a majority preference for one thread per chapter by Monday, I will edit this post to make it for chapter 108 only. In that case a new thread for chapter 109 should be posted by whoever gets a chance and wants to after the chapter is released.

EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.

There is a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.