trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[SEQ RERUN] Is Reality Ugly?
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-23T06:49:26.051Z

Today's post, Is Reality Ugly? was originally published on 12 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There are three reasons why a world governed by math can still seem messy. First, we may not actually know the math. Secondly, even if we do know all of the math, we may not have enough computing power to do the full calculation. And finally, even if we did know all the math, and we could compute it, we still don't know where in the mathematical system we are living.

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 Expecting Beauty, 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.
Spend Money on Ergonomics
by Kevin — 2011-12-23T06:40:08.943Z

Warning: This is an applied rationality post, about rationality applied to a specific area of life, not a generalized rationality post.

Ergonomics is incredibly important. Sadly, so many of us in the techno-geek cluster ignore well-defined best practices of ergonomics and develop the infamous hunched back of late night computer toiling.

Seriously, ergonomics is basically a solved problem. The mathematics of anthropometry in relation to body mechanics and repetive stressors on the body are quite well understood.

I am here to offer you a basic, incredibly important, yet widely ignored lesson of rationality.

Spend money on ergonomics!

I really can't emphasize this enough. It's such low hanging fruit, yet I know way too many master aspiring rationalists with egregious ergonomic setups.

It is accepted wisdom on Less Wrong that optimizing your career is important, because you'll spend 80,000 hours working on your career. Strikingly, ergonomics presents an even larger time-based optimization opportunity. With straightforward monetary investment, you can dramatically improve the next hundreds of thousands of hours of your life. The effect size here is just enormous. Spend money on ergonomics, and you will be less fatigued, more energetic, more productive, and healthier into the later years of your life.

Chairs

If you must do your computing while sitting (and do consider alternative standing desks, treadmill desks, or a desk suited to computing while lying in bed), then a good chair is a stunningly good investment. If you make your living while sitting in a chair and computing, what is a $500 investment in your comfort and good health and productivity while sitting? A used Aeron from Craigslist costs around $500 and is the gold standard of ergonomic chair design.

At the low end of ergnomic chairs, the Ikea TORBJÖRN gets a hearty recommendation. It's only $39. Buy some extras for your visitors? That's what I did but then they all ended up in the rooms of my roommates. At the midrange, I have recommended the Ikea Verksam, but it appears to be discontinued. I think the current model Volmar is similar enough though I have not personally sat in it.

The important thing when getting your chair is to make sure it actually fits your body enough to let you sit in a proper ergonomic position. Note that the model in these OSHA images is committing ...
On avoiding evidence
by KatjaGrace — 2011-12-23T05:01:47.000Z

I often look away when I order food from a place where I can see it being prepared, because I expect to see things that will make me doubt my safety dining there. Similarly I prefer to sleep when I am sick, watch loud tv while on airplanes, and buy foods and drinks rather than make them myself where I can see myself making them.

This is all, of course, irrational. If I expect that opening my eyes will show me evidence that will make me believe X, then I already believe X. Or I should, if I am rational and expect to remain so. In these cases I don’t expect to remain rational. I quite reasonably expect that if I receive particular pieces of evidence I will update too much, so I should not believe what I expect to believe in the future, conditional on collecting evidence. I should avoid the evidence.

The ‘avoid evidence’ solution doesn’t seem like a very good one though. If I recognize that updating so much is irrational in time to avoid the evidence, why don’t I just recognize it when I get the evidence, and not update so much?

Perhaps I am just full of irrational fears that I can’t control by my mere will and reasoning. I don’t think that’s quite it though. Intuitively it seems the problem is that while I believe that I will vastly overweight any evidence I get to the effect that my sandwich is dangerous, when I actually see the rashy hand go into the lettuce or whatever it’s hard to judge whether this isn’t perhaps one of the rare occasions when I should be concerned. The specific piece of evidence looks different every time, so it’s hard to convince myself that a novel particular event that looks bad at the moment really fits into the reference class of other evidence that looks bad and isn’t dangerous.

Do other people behave this way? How should they behave instead? How do you fix this?
Applied Rationality Practice
by ksvanhorn — 2011-12-23T04:43:03.397Z

It's one thing to read about a subject, but one gains a deeper understanding by seeing it applied to real problems, and an even deeper understanding by applying it yourself. This applies in particular to the closely related subjects of rationality, cognitive biases, and decision theory. With this in mind, I'd like to propose that we create one or more discussion topics each devoted to discussing and analyzing one decision problem of one person, and see how all this theory we've been discussing can help. The person could be either a Less Wrong member or just an acquaintance of one of us.

I'll commit to actively participating myself. Does anyone want to put forth a problem to discuss?
Less Wrong Archives
by Grognor — 2011-12-23T01:42:39.608Z

The last straw was finding out that the manually-generated (why manual? I don't understand!) "All Articles" article is more than a year out of date. The auto-generated list of Eliezer's Overcoming Bias posts isn't out of date if you only want the posts that were once on Overcoming Bias, but why would you want only those?

Can we please have a real, automatically generated archives link for Less Wrong? Perhaps one for the Discussion section, too. (And one that skips over meetups. Those don't need to be recorded for antiquity.)

I'm sincerely confused as to why we don't already have one of these. It seems like such an obviously essential tool. It seems like an open problem that nobody has actually thought of. Or maybe I'm just weird and care about archives far more than everyone else does.

Unfortunately, this is not something I can actually help with. Good luck to any brave soul who also thinks this is a problem but can actually do something to fix it.
A way of specifying utility functions for UDT
by cousin_it — 2011-12-23T00:37:33.423Z

The original UDT post defined an agent's preferences as a list of programs it cares about, and a utility function over their possible execution histories. That's a good and general formulation, but how do we make a UDT agent care about our real world, seeing as we don't know its true physics yet? It seems difficult to detect humans (or even paperclips) in the execution history of an arbitrary physics program.

But we can reframe the problem like this: the universal prior is a probability distribution over all finite bitstrings. If we like some bitstrings more than others, we can ask a UDT agent to influence the universal prior to make those bitstrings more probable. After all, the universal prior is an uncomputable mathematical object that is not completely known to us (and even defined in terms of all possible computer programs, including ours). We already know that UDT agents can control such objects, and it turns out that such control can transfer to the real world.

For example, you could pick a bitstring that describes the shape of a paperclip, type it into a computer and run a UDT AI with a utility function which says "maximize the probability of this bitstring under the universal prior, mathematically defined in such-and-such way". For good measure you could give the AI some actuators, e.g. connect its output to the Internet. The AI would notice our branch of the multiverse somewhere within the universal prior, notice itself running within that branch, seize the opportunity for control, and pave over our world so it looks like a paperclip from as many points of view as possible. The thing is like AIXI in its willingness to kill everyone, but different from AIXI in that it probably won't sabotage itself by mining its own CPU for silicon or becoming solipsistic.

This approach does not see the universal prior as a fixed probability distribution over possible universes, instead you could view it as picking from several different possible universal priors. A utility function thus specified doesn't always look like utility maximization from within the universal prior's own multiverse of programs. For example, you could ask the agent to keep a healthy balance between paperclips and staples in the multiverse, i.e. minimize |P(A)-P(B)| where A is a paperclip bitstring, B is a staple bitstring, and P is the universal prior.

The idea is scary because we...
Meetup : Melbourne practical rationality meetup
by matt — 2011-12-22T22:47:12.203Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne practical rationality meetup

WHEN:
06 January 2012 07:00:00AM (+1100)

WHERE:
55 Walsh St, West Melbourne VIC 3003, Australia

Practical rationality, as distinct from the social and rationality outreach meetups. Look for a social meetup on the 3rd Friday of each month.

Discussion:

http://groups.google.com/group/melbourne-less-wrong http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=6a317

This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month.

All welcome from 6pm. Call the phone number on the door and I'll let you in.

Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne practical rationality meetup
How to get the most out of the next year
by alexvermeer — 2011-12-22T21:23:59.188Z

We are not automatically strategic. Since we want to get stuff done, it only makes sense to try harder—and what better time than the start of a new year?

In short: the New Year is a great time to do some life review and planning. How are things going? How was the past year? Do a thorough personal review to find out. What are you going to do next year? Make a plan. How can you increase your chances of success? Take all of your plans, projects, and goals and optimize them based on what you have learned on Less Wrong.

—

In the spirit of communal winning, here are the details on how I do my yearly review. Maybe you will find this process as useful as I have? I’m not quite sure if this is LW quality, so let me know with the karma.

For starters, I break down my life into fourteen areas, not necessarily of equal importance or in any specific order:

Worldview & Purpose – Do you have something to protect? Your worldview is your complete set of beliefs about everything—the past, present, and future; what is valuable, virtuous, and just. Do you have clarity as to your existence, purpose, and place in the universe? What is your philosophy of life? What do you want to get out of life?

Contribution & Impact – How are you giving value to the world? Are you making a difference? How much impact does your existence have environmentally, socially, and cognitively? Are you practicing optimal philanthropy?

Location & Possessions – Are you tied to one location? Are you mobile? This includes your current living situation, where you are in the world; your home, possessions, electronics, toys, and material sufficiency.

Money & Finances – Do you have savings, investments, assets, and debt? Do you have a budget and do you follow it? Are your finances organized and managed? Do you know where you spend your money?

Career & Work – Your work, job, career, or business; your source of income. Is what you do your calling? Are you engaged? Have you optimized your job? Are you networked within your industry?

Health & Fitness – What do you eat? Do you exercise regularly? How often do you get sick? What is your overall energy level and resistance to illness? What are your major health issues and susceptibilities?

Knowledge & Education – What do you know? Are you developing your mind a...
Anything New?
by billswift — 2011-12-22T11:53:32.492Z

In a discussion on HackerNews that went a little sideways, I left this comment:

I haven't seen much original on the internet. Almost every "new" idea I have seen on the Net I saw in print in the 1980s or 1990s. Even if the software is just now catching up to the ideas.

Thinking about it more, I cannot think of a single new idea that I have read in more than a decade. The closest is Robin's take on the primacy of status and signalling, and even that is really just an extension.

So what are your candidates for really new ideas?
[SEQ RERUN] Expecting Beauty
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-22T06:37:49.482Z

Today's post, Expecting Beauty was originally published on 12 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Mathematicians expect that if you dig deep enough, a stable, or even beautiful, pattern will emerge. Some people claim that this belief is unfounded. But, we have previously found order in many of the places we've looked for it.

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 Beautiful Math, 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.
The Magician: A Reductionist's Allegory
by Peter Wildeford — 2011-12-22T06:13:22.636Z

I like to do a lot of hobbies. One of those is doing magic tricks with a deck of cards. It, along with debate, are the only performance arts I enjoy personally preforming.

You know you have a great magic trick when you can do it without failing. But it also helps to impress the audience greatly. Truly amazing tricks do something that appears quite literally impossible, or at least downright inexplicable. In the course of doing my tricks, I make a large variety of supernatural claims, such as being able to read your mind by a sheer act of will, or being able to suspend the laws of physics in order to make a Ten of Hearts turn into a Nine of Spades.

Now we know that these tricks are just that: tricks. I am not actually inducing all the atoms in a Ten of Hearts to transmogrify into all the atoms of a Nine of Spades, using supernatural powers to suspend the massive explosions that would take place if done through ...you know... physics. I only make it look like I am.

In reality, I use techniques like double lifts and card forces that all work well within the known boundaries of physics, no supernatural powers necessary. Every magic trick ever done is actually reducible to these slights of hand, along with a story to keep the trick moving (called "patter") and some other types of creativity.

But this kind of reductionism in magic -- explaining what looks to be supernatural, paranormal, or just downright impossible in terms of slights of hand and misdirection -- is a great analogy to the claims of magic in real life: the claims that certain parts of the world we know of; most notably the soul, gods, and miracles; are all best explained as the supernatural is very similar to the claim that certain magic tricks are just that... actual magic.

In the South Park episode "Super Best Friends", magician David Blaine visits South Park, impressing the town's residents with street magic, creating a cult that worshiped him as capable of preforming true magic.

Now imagine that Blainetology was not a cult, but an honest religion that thought they saw genuine miracles. The Blainetologists hold that some of David Blaine's tricks are examples of real, supernatural magic, and have start building churches to worship Blaine, asserting that his final magic trick will be to grant all of his believers everlasting life ...
Meetup : Columbus or Cincinnati Meetup
by daenerys — 2011-12-22T01:52:36.971Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Columbus or Cincinnati Meetup

WHEN:
22 January 2012 05:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Wilmington, OH

Location: Max & Erma's off I-71 in Wilmington

Bring a board game(s).

There is an Ohio LW email list and google group being formed. PM me to get on it.

(Currently expecting ~9 attendees. Carpools available)

Discussion article for the meetup : Columbus or Cincinnati Meetup
Some thoughts on AI, Philosophy, and Safety
by paulfchristiano — 2011-12-22T01:32:06.694Z

I've spent some time over the last two weeks thinking about problems around FAI. I've committed some of these thoughts to writing and put them up here.

There are about a dozen real posts and some scraps. I think some of this material will be interesting to certain LWers; there is a lot of discussion of how to write down concepts and instructions formally (which doesn't seem so valuable in itself, but it seems like someone should do it at some point) some review and observations on decision theory, and some random remarks on complexity theory, entropy, and prediction markets.
Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup
by EvelynM — 2011-12-21T23:28:11.129Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup

WHEN:
04 January 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
144 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524

A new year, a new opportunity to meet up.

Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup
[SEQ RERUN] Beautiful Math
by MinibearRex — 2011-12-21T07:15:25.337Z

Today's post, Beautiful Math was originally published on 10 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

The joy of mathematics is inventing mathematical objects, and then noticing that the mathematical objects that you just created have all sorts of wonderful properties that you never intentionally built into them. It is like building a toaster and then realizing that your invention also, for some unexplained reason, acts as a rocket jetpack and MP3 player.

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 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities, 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.
Decision Analysis Sequence
by Vaniver — 2011-12-21T00:12:01.469Z

This is the introduction (conclusion) to my decision analysis sequence. It covers (much more quickly and less completely) what you would expect to see in a semester-long course on decision making. The posts are:

Uncertainty: the basics of treating uncertainties as probabilities and doing Bayesian math.

5 Axioms of Decision Making: the five steps / assumptions that form the foundation of careful decision-making.

Compressing Reality to Math: how to take a sticky, complicated situation and condense it down to something a calculator can solve, without feeling like you've left something important out.

Measures, Risk, Death, and War: how to deal with many similar prospects (utilities), risks of death, and adversaries.

Value of Information: Four Examples: how to value information-gathering activity, like tests or waiting, and incorporate it into your decision-making process.

I'd like to welcome any comments about the sequence here. What parts did I do well? What parts need work? What parts would you like to see expanded (or removed)?

One of the difficulties in posting about a topic like this is that it's foundational: basic, but important to get right. The idea of an expected utility calculation is not new (although the approach I take here may be novel for many of you) and, like I say in the VoI post, there's often more benefit in applying the process to examples than repeatedly talking about the process. The case studies I have access to, though, are not ones I can publish online, and I don't think I can construct an example that would work as well as a real one. Do people have problems they would like me to analyze with this framework as examples?
Measures, Risk, Death, and War
by Vaniver — 2011-12-20T23:37:11.658Z

This is the fourth post of a sequence on decision analysis, preceded by Compressing Reality to Math. It touches on a wide variety of topics which didn't seem to work well as posts of their own, either because they were too short or too long.

Measures over Prospects

So far, we've looked at distinct prospects: different toys, different activities, different life experiences. Those are difficult to compare, and we might actually be unsure about the ordering of some of them. Would I prefer playing Go or chatting more? It takes a bit of effort and imagination to say.

Oftentimes, though, we face prospects that are measured in the same units. Would you prefer having $10 to having $4? There's no effort or imagination necessary: the answer is yes.1 Facing wildly different prospects- a vacation to the Bahamas, a new computer, a raise at work- it can be helpful to try and reduce them to common units, so that preferences are easy to calculate. This is especially true if the prospects are fungible: you could sell your new computer at some time cost to receive a dollar amount, or could buy one from a store at some dollar cost. It doesn't make sense to value winning a computer higher than the cost to buy one (or gain from selling one, if that manages to be higher), even if you value it much more highly than its cost.2

As always, adding uncertainty makes things interesting: would you prefer having {.5 $10, .5 $0} or {1 $4}?3 The answer depends on your circumstances: if lunch costs $3 and you get $10 worth of value out of eating lunch (the first time), then the certain deal is probably better. If these are your marginal investment dollars, though, a 20% expected return is probably worth jumping on.

When dealing with a complicated problem with lots of dollar prospects, we could express each one as the certain equivalent of a deal between the highest and lowest dollar prospects. If we aren't great at eliciting preferences, though, we might end up with weird results we don't really agree with, and adding a new dollar amount requires eliciting a new preference probability.

An alternative is to come up with a function that maps the prospects to preference probabilities. The function can be fit with only a few elicited parameters, and then just evaluated for every prospect, making large problems and adding new prospects easy.

As you've probably guessed, that function is called a utilit...