trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Meetup : Sydney Meetup - March
by taryneast — 2014-02-28T08:17:04.824Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - March

WHEN:
26 March 2014 06:30:00PM (+1100)

WHERE:
Sydney City RSL, 565 George St, Sydney, Australia 2000

So far so good. Our last two meetups have been great - so lets do it one more time.

6:30 PM for early discussion
7PM general dinner-discussion
after dinner we'll have our rationality exercise and a more specific discussion-topic.

I'll book another table under the name "less wrong". Last meetup we were in the restaurant on level 2.
When I arrive I'll facebook about where exactly the table is located.

I'd like to theme this meetup with a sub-goal of outreach.

If you've been thinking of a friend you might like to bring along - this is the night to do it.

We'll have a brief intro for any newbies to the community and maybe have our early discussion be about the community and what we think we can offer.

Afterwards, we'll havethe rationality exercise and more specific discussion-topic TBD by Eliot.

Discussion article for the meetup : Sydney Meetup - March
Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity
by RomeoStevens — 2014-02-28T06:28:57.888Z

There is a lot of bad science and controversy in the realm of how to have a healthy lifestyle. Every week we are bombarded with new studies conflicting older studies telling us X is good or Y is bad. Eventually we reach our psychological limit, throw up our hands, and give up. I used to do this a lot. I knew exercise was good, I knew flossing was good, and I wanted to eat better. But I never acted on any of that knowledge. I would feel guilty when I thought about this stuff and go back to what I was doing. Unsurprisingly, this didn't really cause me to make any positive lifestyle changes.

Instead of vaguely guilt-tripping you with potentially unreliable science news, this post aims to provide an overview of lifestyle interventions that have very strong evidence behind them and concrete ways to implement them.

A quick FAQ before we get started

Why should I care about longevity-promoting habits at a young age?

First, many longevity-promoting lifestyle changes will increase your quality of life in the short term. In doing this research, I found a few interventions that had shockingly large impacts on my subjective day-to-day wellness. Second, the choices you make have larger downstream effects the earlier you get started. Trying to undo years of damage and ingrained habits at an advanced age really isn’t a position you want to find yourself in. Third, extending your life matters more the more you believe in the proximity of transformative tech. If the pace of technological improvement is increasing, then adding a decade to your life may in fact be the decade that counts. Missing out on life extension tech by a few years would really suck.

Isn’t longevity mostly just genetics?

That's what I believed for a long time, but a quick trip to wikipedia tells us that only 20-30% of the variance in longevity is heritable.

What sort of benefits can I expect?

The life satisfaction of people who remain independent and active actually increases significantly with age. Mental and physical performance are strongly correlated, meaning maintaining your body will help maintain your mind. The qualitative benefits for life satisfaction of many of these interventions can be so dramatic that it is hard to estimate them. The gulf in quality of life between people maintaining good habits and those who do not widens with age.

How were these recommendations generated?/Why shou

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The sin of updating when you can change whether you exist
by Benya — 2014-02-28T01:25:25.054Z

Trigger warning: In a thought experiment in this post, I used a hypothetical torture scenario without thinking, even though it wasn't necessary to make my point. Apologies, and thanks to an anonymous user for pointing this out. I'll try to be more careful in the future.

Should you pay up in the counterfactual mugging?

I've always found the argument about self-modifying agents compelling: If you expected to face a counterfactual mugging tomorrow, you would want to choose to rewrite yourself today so that you'd pay up. Thus, a decision theory that didn't pay up wouldn't be reflectively consistent; an AI using such a theory would decide to rewrite itself to use a different theory.

But is this the only reason to pay up? This might make a difference: Imagine that Omega tells you that it threw its coin a million years ago, and would have turned the sky green if it had landed the other way. Back in 2010, I wrote a post arguing that in this sort of situation, since you've always seen the sky being blue, and every other human being has also always seen the sky being blue, everyone has always had enough information to conclude that there's no benefit from paying up in this particular counterfactual mugging, and so there hasn't ever been any incentive to self-modify into an agent that would pay up ... and so you shouldn't.

I've since changed my mind, and I've recently talked about part of the reason for this, when I introduced the concept of an l-zombie, or logical philosophical zombie, a mathematically possible conscious experience that isn't physically instantiated and therefore isn't actually consciously experienced. (Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not claiming that the idea that "some mathematically possible experiences are l-zombies" is likely to be true, but I think it's a useful concept for thinking about anthropics, and I don't think we should rule out l-zombies given our present state of knowledge. More in the l-zombies post and in this post about measureless Tegmark IV.) Suppose that Omega's coin had come up the other way, and Omega had turned the sky green. Then you and I would be l-zombies. But if Omega was able to make a confident guess about the decision we'd make if confronted with the counterfactual mugging (without simulating us, so that we continue to be l-zombies), then our decisions would still influence what happens in the actual physical world. Thus, if l...
[LINK] Joseph Bottum on Politics as the Mindkiller
by Salemicus — 2014-02-27T19:40:00.978Z

One of my favourite Less Wrong articles is Politics is the mindkiller. Part of the reason that political discussion so bad is the poor incentives - if you have little chance to change the outcome, then there is little reason to strive for truth or accuracy - but a large part of the reason is our pre-political attitudes and dispositions. I don't mean to suggest that there is a neat divide; clearly, there is a reflexive relation between the incentives within political discussion and our view of the appropriate purpose and scope of politics. Nevertheless, I think it's a useful distinction to make, and so I applaud the fact that Eliezer doesn't start his essays on the subject by talking about incentives, feedback or rational irrationality - instead he starts with the fact that our approach to politics is instinctively tribal.

This brings me to Joseph Bottum's excellent recent article in The American, The Post-Protestant Ethic and Spirit of America. This charts what he sees as the tribal changes within America that have shaped current attitudes to politics. I think it's best seen in conjunction with Arnold Kling's excellent The Three Languages of Politics; while Kling talks about the political language and rhetoric of modern American political groupings, Bottum's essay is more about the social changes that have led to these kinds of language and rhetoric.

We live in what can only be called a spiritual age, swayed by its metaphysical fears and hungers, when we imagine that our ordinary political opponents are not merely mistaken, but actually evil. When we assume that past ages, and the people who lived in them, are defined by the systematic crimes of history. When we suppose that some vast ethical miasma, racism, radicalism, cultural self-hatred, selfish blindness, determines the beliefs of classes other than our own. When we can make no rhetorical distinction between absolute wickedness and the people with whom we disagree. The Republican Congress is the Taliban. President Obama is a Communist. Wisconsin’s governor is a Nazi.

...

The real question, of course, is how and why this happened. How and why politics became a mode of spiritual redemption for nearly everyone in America, but especially for the college-educated upper-middle class, who are probably best understood not as the elite, but as the elect, people who know themselves as good, as relieved of t

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The Rationality Wars
by Stefan_Schubert — 2014-02-27T17:08:45.470Z

Ever since Tversky and Kahneman started to gather evidence purporting to show that humans suffer from a large number of cognitive biases, other psychologists and philosophers have criticized these findings. For instance, philosopher L. J. Cohen argued in the 80's that there was something conceptually incoherent with the notion that most adults are irrational (with respect to a certain problem). By some sort of Wittgensteinian logic, he thought that the majority's way of reasoning is by definition right. (Not a high point in the history of analytic philosophy, in my view.) See chapter 8 of this book (where Gigerenzer, below, is also discussed).

Another attempt to resurrect human rationality is due to Gerd Gigerenzer and other psychologists. They have a) shown that if you tweak some of the heuristics and biases (i.e. the research program led by Tversky and Kahneman) experiments but a little - for instance by expressing probabilities in terms of frequencies - people make much fewer mistakes and b) argued, on the back of this, that the heuristics we use are in many situations good (and fast and frugal) rules of thumb (which explains why they are evolutionary adaptive). Regarding this, I don't think that Tversky and Kahneman ever doubted that the heuristics we use are quite useful in many situations. Their point was rather that there are lots of naturally occuring set-ups which fool our fast and frugal heuristics. Gigerenzer's findings are not completely uninteresting - it seems to me he does nuance the thesis of massive irrationality a bit - but his claims to the effect that these heuristics are rational in a strong sense are wildly overblown in my opnion. The Gigerenzer vs. Tversky/Kahneman debates are well discussed in this article (although I think they're too kind to Gigerenzer).

A strong argument against attempts to save human rationality is the argument from individual differences, championed by Keith Stanovich. He argues that the fact that some intelligent subjects consistently avoid to fall prey to the Wason Selection task, the conjunction fallacy, and other fallacies, indicates that there is something misguided with the notion that the answer that psychologists traditionally has seen as normatively correct is in fact misguided.

Hence I side with Tversky and Kahneman in this debate. Let me just mention one interesting and possible succesful method for ...
Meetup : London Games Meetup 09/03 [VENUE CHANGE: PENDEREL'S OAK!], + Social 16/02 
by Tenoke — 2014-02-27T16:07:05.661Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London Games Meetup 09/03, + Socials 02/03 and 16/02

WHEN: 09 March 2014 02:00:00PM (+0000)

WHERE: 283-288 High Holborn, City of London, WC1V 7HP

LessWrong London's next non-social gathering is going to be on the 9th of March and is going to be a Games Meetup at a new location - The Penderel's Oak pub located about 5-10 minutes away from our usual spot in the middle between Chancery Lane and Holborn stations (I'd recommend looking at the map to get a better idea of the location)

Thanks to Phil we have a wide range of choices.The main ones are Resistance, Coup and Zendo. Alternatively, we will be able to play Ingenious, Go, Diplomacy (only if people insist on it) or card games.

We are also having socials on the 16th of March as the Meetups are currently a weekly event.

If you want more information about the meetups or anything else come by our google group or alternatively to our facebook group.
If you have trouble finding us - feel free to call or text me on 07425168803.

Discussion article for the meetup : London Games Meetup 09/03, + Socials 02/03 and 16/02
Link:  Poking the Bear (Podcast)
by James_Miller — 2014-02-27T15:43:29.955Z

A Dan Carlin Podcast about how the United States is foolishly antagonizing the Russians over Ukraine. Carlin makes an analogy as to how the United States would feel if Russia helped overthrow the government of Mexico to install an anti-American government under conditions that might result in a Mexican civil war. Because of the Russian nuclear arsenal, even a tiny chance of a war between the United States and Russia has a huge negative expected value.
Meetup : Saint Petersburg sunday meetup
by efim — 2014-02-27T11:41:21.231Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Saint Petersburg sunday meetup

WHEN:
01 March 2014 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE:
Санкт-Петербург, м. Технологический Институт, ул.1-я Красноармейская, дом 15

With high probability we will be playing Zendo.
Also studying up information about CFAR and its publicly available information.

If you are russian lesswronger who sees this announcement for the first time, please check out our newsletter or vk group: newsletter or http://vk.com/lw_spb for more detailed descriptions.

If you are a foreign guest in Saint Petersburg - we also would all be glad to see you and to meet you - at lest some of our attendees speak english.

Discussion article for the meetup : Saint Petersburg sunday meetup
Approaching Logical Probability
by Manfred — 2014-02-27T07:44:38.172Z

Followup To: Logic as Probability

If we design a robot that acts as if it's uncertain about mathematical statements, that violates some desiderata for probability. But realistic robots cannot prove all theorems; they have to be uncertain about hard math problems.

In the name of practicality, we want a foundation for decision-making that captures what it means to make a good decision, even with limited resources. "Good" means that even though our real-world robot can't make decisions well enough to satisfy Savage's theorem, we want to approximate that ideal, not throw it out. Although I don't have the one best answer to give you, in this post we'll take some steps forward.

The objects we call probabilities are specified by desiderata that tell us how they behave. Any uncertainty about math problems violates those desiderata, but we still want to be able to assign logical probabilities that behave a lot like probabilities. The basic principles - not making up or ignoring information, not throwing away money or being inconsistent - should be deviated from as little as possible even when computing power is scarce. We want to develop a foundation for logical probabilities by starting from the rules governing ordinary probability, and then minimally restricting the application of those rules.

As we do this, it's important to keep track of what changes we make and why. Sometimes people just define logical probabilities, without worrying about desiderata. This is fine, when it works, and is often patchable if it doesn't have the right properties. But if you use it for something important and and get a surprise failure, it's really bad. My hope here is to construct logical probabilities that have the good properties, while keeping handwaving and mysterious assumptions to a minimum.

The perils of handwaving are more dire than they appear, and they are at their most dire in the hardest and most confusing reaches of physics. After better approaches fail, many theorists resort to just making up approximations and then trying to justify them. Doing this is known colloquially as a "1/ego expansion." Simply put, it doesn't work; there are too many vital little details. It's why even condensed matter theorists tell you not to trust condensed matter theorists about high temperature superconductivity.

We must abandon regular probabilities because our robot has

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Meetup : Berkeley: Implementation Intentions
by Nisan — 2014-02-27T07:06:29.784Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: Implementation Intentions

WHEN:
05 March 2014 07:00:00PM (-0800)

WHERE:
2030 Addison, 3rd floor, Berkeley, CA

Hello all, next week's meetup will be about implementation intentions:

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

It sounds boring but in fact it's a technique for changing your behavior that produces half a standard deviation of change in studies with a minimal intervention. Basically, there's a good chance that coming to this meetup will change your behavior in a significant and positive way :)

This is a thing they teach at CFAR.

Please arrive between 7pm and 7:30pm on Wednesday. At 7:30pm as usual we'll review our weekly goals and record goals for the coming week; it should take less than 15 minutes. Afterward I will give a short presentation on implementation intentions, and then we will help each other create implementation intentions

Even though this takes place at CFAR, it's not a CFAR-sponsored event. The CFAR office is at 2030 Addison, 3rd floor, Berkeley, near the Downtown Berkeley BART. If you find yourself locked out, text me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: Implementation Intentions
Meetup : Munich Meetup
by cadac — 2014-02-26T23:49:10.983Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup

WHEN:
08 March 2014 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Theresienstraße 41, 80333 München

We're going to try a different location this time, and a different format – I'd like to do a few concrete exercises on basic probability theory or something similar. Afterwards we'll move on to free discussion and maybe Zendo.
We're planning to meet outside the mathematics building at the LMU. Depending on the weather, we'll stay outside or occupy a free room inside the math department. Whoever brings food for the group is awesome. :) It goes without saying that newcomers are very welcome.

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup
Meetup : Boston - Optimizing Empathy Levels
by Vika — 2014-02-26T23:44:02.830Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Optimizing Empathy Levels

WHEN:
02 March 2014 02:00:00PM (-0500)

WHERE:
Citadel, 98 Elm St Apt 1, Somerville, MA

Joe Schneider will give a talk on Optimizing Empathy Levels:

-What empathy is useful for.

-Why LWers (and others) undervalue it.

-Why non-LWers (and others) overvalue it.

-How you can use it properly to get ahead.

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups start at 2pm, and have an alternating location:

2nd and 4th Sunday meetups are in MIT's building 66 at 25 Ames St, room 156. Room number subject to change based on availability; signs will be posted with the actual room number.

Meetups on other weeks are at Citadel in Porter Sq, at 98 Elm St, apt 1, Somerville.

Our default schedule is as follows:

—Phase 1: Arrival, greetings, unstructured conversation.

—Phase 2: The headline event. This starts promptly at 2:30pm, and lasts 30-60 minutes.

—Phase 3: Further discussion. We'll explore the ideas raised in phase 2, often in smaller groups.

—Phase 4: Dinner.

Discussion article for the meetup : Boston - Optimizing Empathy Levels
Meetup : Brussels - Calibration and other games
by Roxolan — 2014-02-26T16:33:06.851Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels - Calibration and other games

WHEN:
08 March 2014 01:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Rue des Alexiens 55 1000 Bruxelles

This month we're stealing an idea from the Atlanta group: using Wits & Wagers for confidence calibration (and a little Fermi estimation, which I keep saying we'll do and we never end up doing). It's like a trivia game, except you don't need to know anything to win! (errata: you do need to know that you don't know anything. else.) We may spice it up with some paranoid debating.

I also have a game related to the Memory Palace, and another one related to the Ultimatum Game. But we may not have time to do everything.

If someone can get their hands on an English copy of Wits & Wagers (or Gambit 7, please tell me.

We will meet at 1 pm at "La Fleur en papier doré", close to the Brussels Central station. The meeting will be in English to facilitate both French and Dutch speaking members.

If you are coming for the first time, please consider filling out this one minute form to share your contact information.

The Brussels meetup group communicates through a Google Group.

Meetup announcements are also mirrored on meetup.com

Discussion article for the meetup : Brussels - Calibration and other games
Rational Evangelism
by aarongertler — 2014-02-26T06:00:25.556Z

Not "rationality evangelism", which CFAR is doing already if I understand their mission. "Rational evangelism", which is what CFAR would do if they were Catholic missionaries.

If you believe in Hell, as many people very truly do, it is hard for Hell not to seem like the world's most important problem.

To some extent, proselytizing religions treat Hell with respect--they spend billions of dollars trying to save sinners, and the most devout often spend their lives preaching the Gospel (insert non-Christian variant).

But is Hell given enough respect? Every group meets with mixed success in solving its problems, but the problem of eternal suffering leaves little room for "mixed success". Even the most powerful religions are stuck in patterns that make the work of salvation very difficult indeed. And some seem willing to reduce their evangelism* for reasons that aren't especially convincing in the face of "nonbelievers are quite possibly going to burn, or at least be outside the presence of God, forever".

What if you were a rationalist who viewed Hell like certain Less Wrongers view the Singularity? (This belief would be hard to reconcile with rationalism generally, but for the sake of argument...) How would you tackle the problem of eternal suffering with the same passion we spend on probability theory and friendly AI?

I wrote a long thought experiment to better define the problem, involving a religion called "Normomism", but it was awkward. There are plenty of real religions whose members believe in Hell, or at least in a Heaven that many people aren't going to (also a terrible loss). Some have a stated mission of saving as many people as possible from a bad afterlife.

So where are they falling short?

If you were the Pope, or the Caliph, or the supreme dictator of some smaller religion, what tactics would you use to convince more people to do and believe exactly the things that would save them--whether that's faith or good works? Why haven't these tactics been tried already? Is there really much room for improvement?

Spreading the Word

This post isn't a dig at believers, though it does seem like many people don't act on their sincere belief in an eternal afterlife. (I don't mind when people try to convert me--at least t...
Is IQ what we actually need to know?
by NancyLebovitz — 2014-02-25T18:21:42.780Z

I've never heard of anyone saying "I thought that person was really intelligent, but they turned out not to be", and when there are scandals about people with fake credentials, they don't seem to come from people with fake credentials making mistakes-- instead, someone checks the history.

It seems to me that you can find out a lot about people's intelligence by talking with them a little, though I've underestimated people who were bright enough but didn't present as intellectual.

The real problems are with identifying conscientiousness, benevolence, and loyalty-- that's where the unpleasant surprises show up.