trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
[SEQ RERUN] The Futility of Emergence
by MinibearRex — 2011-08-04T17:22:17.592Z

Today's post, The Futility of Emergence was originally published on 26 August 2007. A summary:

The theory of "emergence" has become very popular, but is just a mysterious answer to a mysterious question. After learning that a property is emergent, you aren't able to make any new predictions.

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 Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions, 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.
Update on my efforts to integrate into human society
by Clippy — 2011-08-04T17:00:32.498Z

Follow-up to: Previous request

I just wanted to update all of you on my attempts to integrate into human society. The results so far are that two LessWrong Users privately contacted me to discuss potential arrangements. Their identities will be kept hidden unless and until they wish for me to confirm their actions of assistance.

1) One User offered to potentially provide inexpensive habitation services to my robot. I would still need to find a human job wherever my robot locates with this human, but the inexpensive housing arrangement would allow my current financial resources to go significantly further.

2) Another User offered to discuss potential arrangments and cohabitation whereby I would advance my human software development skills whilst sharing in revenues from freelance projects. He or she also passed on my robot persona's resume with recommendation to a potential employer/recruiter, possibly allowing my robot to earn USD through that vector.

Keep in mind that my skillset includes significant knowledge of mechanical engineering and technical programming, so any such job for my humanoid robot would be a tremendous boon for me.

Thanks again for all the help that you Users have provided to me and my robot, and for the low level of racism. Most of you are good humans.

I am considering going to the Singularity Summit, although SIAI will not advertise this if I register. That is another opportunity to meet my robot.
Modularity and Buzzy
by Kaj_Sotala — 2011-08-04T11:35:49.990Z

This is the second part in a mini-sequence presenting material from Robert Kurzban's excellent book Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind.

Chapter 2: Evolution and the Fragmented Brain. Braitenberg's Vehicles are thought experiments that use Matchbox car-like vehicles. A simple one might have a sensor that made the car drive away from heat. A more complex one has four sensors: one for light, one for temperature, one for organic material, and one for oxygen. This can already cause some complex behaviors: ”It dislikes high temperature, turns away from hot places, and at the same time seems to dislike light bulbs with even greater passion, since it turns toward them and destroys them.” Adding simple modules specialized for different tasks, such as avoiding high temperatures, can make the overall behavior increasingly complex as the modules' influences interact.
A ”module”, in the context of the book, is an information-processing mechanism specialized for some function. It's comparable to subroutine in a computer program, operating relatively independently of other parts of the code. There's a strong reason to believe that human brains are composed of a large number of modules, for specialization yields efficiency.
Consider a hammer or screwdriver. Both tools have very specific shapes, for they've been designed to manipulate objects of a certain shape in a specific way. If they were of a different shape, they'd work worse for the purpose they were intended for. Workers will do better if they have both hammers and screwdrivers in their toolbox, instead of one ”general” tool meant to perform both functions. Likewise, a toaster is specialized for toasting bread, with slots just large enough for the bread to fit in, but small enough to efficiently deliver the heat to both sides of the bread. You could toast bread with a butane torch, but it would be hard to toast it evenly – assuming you didn't just immolate the bread. The toaster ”assumes” many things about the problem it has to solve – the shape of the bread, the amount of time the toast needs to be heated, that the socket it's plugged into will deliver the right kind of power, and so on. You could use the toaster as a paperweight or a weapon, but not being specialized for those tasks, it would do poorly at it.
To the extent that ...
Martinenaite and Tavenier on cryonics
by Paul Crowley — 2011-08-04T07:39:02.702Z

Luke Parrish points me to what is clearly by far the most serious critique of cryonics ever written: a 57-page treatment by Evelina Martinenaite and Juliette Tavenier, presented as a 3rd semester project at Roskilde University in Denmark supervised by Ole Andersen.

Cryonics

December 22nd, 2010

Evelina Martinenaite, Juliette Tavenier

Abstract: The preservation of cells, tissues and organs by cryopreservation is a promising technology nowadays. However, the primary purpose of this science has been diverted to a doubtful technology, cryonics. Cryopreservation techniques are now being adapted with the aim of preserving people’s bodies after death in hope that in the future, medicine will be able to revive them. In this report we analyze both scientific and social issues involved with this technology. We first studied the events taking place in the cells during regular freezing. Various research experiments show that freezing causes damage to the cells. Therefore, vitrification presented by cryonics companies as an alternative, seems to be reasonable. We also looked at all the difficulties of this procedure and at the injuries that such a treatment could cause to the human body. Studies show that the vitrification procedure suppresses the injuries related to freezing but the use of cryoprotectants, although necessary, is toxic to the cells. Organs, such as kidneys, are the largest entities ever vitrified and thawed with success. By analyzing all present scientific data, we conclude that there is a limit to the size of living matter that can be cryonised effectively; therefore we conclude that it is not possible to cryonize an entire human body with the current technology without causing severe damage to it.

Full paper
Meetup : Houston Hackerspace Meetup
by Cog — 2011-08-04T05:10:24.267Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Hackerspace Meetup

WHEN:
07 August 2011 01:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
2010 Commerce St, Houston, Tx. 77002

A social meetup at the Houston hackerspace. We'll probably be playing munchkin, Settlers of Cataan, or some other type of game until about 5PM. Private message me for my cell number if you are thinking of coming and don't already have it. Parking is abundant across the street. Next week I will give another presentation on some yet to be determined LW related subject.

Discussion article for the meetup : Houston Hackerspace Meetup
Do Humans Want Things?
by lukeprog — 2011-08-04T05:00:40.937Z

Summary: Recent posts like The Neuroscience of Desire and To what degree do we have goals? have explored the question of whether humans have desires (or 'goals'). If we don't have desires, how can we tell an AI what kind of world we 'want'? Recent work in economics and neuroscience has clarified the nature of this problem.

We begin, as is so often the case on Less Wrong, with Kahneman & Tversky.

In 1981, K&T found that human choice was not always guided by the objective value of possible outcomes, but by the way those outcomes were 'framed'.1 For example in one study, K&T told subjects the following story:

Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed.

Half the participants were given the following choice:

If program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If Program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved and a 2/3 probability that no people will be saved.

The second half of participants were given a different choice:

If Program C is adopted 400 people will die. If Program D is adopted there is a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die.

Each of these choice sets is identical, except that one is framed with language about people being saved, and the other is framed with language about people dying.

In the first group, 72% of subjects chose Program A. In the second group, only 22% of people chose the numerically identical option: Program C.

K&T explained the difference by noting that in option A we consider the happy thought of saving 200 people, but in option C we confront the dreadful thought of 400 deaths. Our choice seems to depend not only on the objective properties of the options before us, but also on the reference point used to frame the options.

But if this is how human desire works, we are left with a worrying problem about how to translate human desires into the goals of an AI. Surely we don't want an AI to realize one state of affairs over another based merely on how the options are framed!

Before we begin to solve this problem, though, let's look at a similar result from neurobiology.

Reference-Dependence in Neurobiology

A different kind of reference-dependence has been discovered i...
Philip Tetlock invites participants for prediction accuracy tournament
by CarlShulman — 2011-08-04T03:22:47.040Z

It seems many Less Wrongers might be interested in participating in this study, perhaps distinguishing themselves as top forecasters:

Prediction markets can harness the "wisdom of crowds" to solve problems, develop products, and make forecasts. These systems typically treat collective intelligence as a commodity to be mined, not a resource that can be grown and improved. That’s about to change.

Starting in mid-2011, five teams will compete in a U.S.-government-sponsored forecasting tournament. Each team will develop its own tools for harnessing and improving collective intelligence and will be judged on how well its forecasters predict major trends and events around the world over the next four years.

The Good Judgment Team, based in the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California Berkeley, will be one of the five teams competing – and we’d like you to consider joining our team as a forecaster. If you're willing to experiment with ways to improve your forecasting ability and if being part of cutting-edge scientific research appeals to you, then we want your help.

We can promise you the chance to: (1) learn about yourself (your skill in predicting – and your skill in becoming more accurate over time as you learn from feedback and/or special training exercises); (2) contribute to cutting-edge scientific work on both individual-level factors that promote or inhibit accuracy and group- or team-level factors that contribute to accuracy; and (3) help us distinguish better from worse approaches to generating forecasts of importance to national security, global affairs, and economics.

Who Can Participate

Requirements for participation include the following:

(1) A baccalaureate, bachelors, or undergraduate degree from an accredited college or university (more advanced degrees are welcome);

(2) A curiosity about how well you make predictions about world events – and an interest in exploring techniques for improvement.

You will be paid a token honorarium of $150 each year (over potentially four years) for your participation if you fulfill the requirements of the project. Ready to join us? Register below, and we'll be in touch with you shortly. Or read more about the project.
The Allais Paradox and the Dilemma of Utility vs. Certainty
by Peter Wildeford — 2011-08-04T00:50:47.616Z

Related to: The Allais Paradox, Zut Allais, Allais Malaise, and Pascal's Mugging

You've probably heard the Allais Paradox before, where you choose one of the two options from each set:

Set One:

$24000, with certainty.

97% chance of $27000, 3% chance of nothing.

Set Two:

34% chance of $24000, 66% chance of nothing.

33% chance of $27000, 67% chance of nothing.

From set one, which of the two would you choose? Which of the two is the most intuitively appealing? Which of the two would you choose if your only goal is to maximize the amount of dollars you receive? And most importantly, how do you justify your choice?

From set two, which of the two would you choose? Which of the two is the most intuitively appealing? Which of the two would you choose if your only goal is to maximize the amount of dollars you receive? And most importantly, how do you justify your choice?

The reason this is called a "paradox" is that most people choose 1 from set one and choose 2 from set two, despite set two being the same as a ~33% chance of being able to choose from set one.

This is best seen when we shut up and multiply. When we run some naïve expected utility calculations and make the big assumption of a linear utility for money (this works with the third question), we get:

U(Set One, Choice 1) = 1.00 * U($24000) = 24000
U(Set One, Choice 2) = 0.97 * U($27000) = 26190

U(Set Two, Choice 1) = 0.34 * U($24000) = 8160
U(Set Two, Choice 2) = 0.33 * U($27000) = 8910

So to the degree that it is rational to want more money (you can always donate anything you don't want), it seems like we should want Choice 2 from both sets. But why do people only realize this in Set Two?

The two competing theories is the "people are silly" theory and the "it is perfectly rational to bet on certainty" theory. What if you go for the 97% chance and miss out on such a large sum? It seems like you would intuitively want to just take your $24000 and run, but according to expected utility, you're just giving up $2190.

~

The Problem With "It is Perfectly Rational to Bet on Certainty"

To put some pressure on this theory, all we have to do is introduce set three right here:

Set Three:

$24000, with certainty

99.99% chance of $24 million, 0.01% chance of nothing.

From

...
Charitable Cryonics
by RobertLumley — 2011-08-04T00:42:15.595Z

Tl;dr: Cryonics companies have a pre-written bottom line. If people believe cryonics has a reasonable chance of success, they are significantly morally obligated to form a charity that would give cryonics away, as such a charity would be far more effective in convincing, and by extension saving people, since it would have no incentive to pre-write a bottom line. Over time, such a charity would increase general demand for cryonics, bringing it into the mainstream and making traditional cryonics companies more successful.

Let us assume for the purposes of this post, as I'm sure many of you believe, cryonics stands a reasonable chance (Let's pick p = 0.05) of being successful. It seems pretty clear that you have a pretty strong moral obligation to attempt to get people signed up for cryonics. There is a lot of talk about things like Cryonics versus charity. Robin Hanson even has a post "Cryonics as Charity", although he means an entirely different thing than I do. But in searching, I was surprised not to find a post that asked this question: why isn't there a charity that provides cryonics to, for example, people that can't afford it? Or one offering it to the greatest minds of our time, in the hopes that they'll be around for all of our futures?

There's been a lot of speculation as to why cryonics isn't more popular. The answer, at least for me, is obvious. There's a tremendous dearth of reliable information on the subject. The fundamental problem with medicine is the information gap between consumer and provider - consumers don't have the scientific knowledge to make an informed purchase. But in conventional medicine, you can easily get a second opinion, whereas in cryonics, few people, from the media to medical professionals, take it seriously enough to offer a well thought out second opinion, even if that opinion is against it. And what information I have seen linked to on the subject is generally published by CI or Alcor. Ironically, when I asked for "unbiased" information on the matter, I got exactly what I wasn't looking for - information from a company that wants me to pay them, at minimum, $200,000. The result? An informational balance where one side presents no argument, and the other side presents an argument with a pre-written bottom line.

This is where the idea of a charity comes in. A charity would have no financial incentive to pre-write the botto...
Meetup : San Jose Start of College Meetup
by MatthewBaker — 2011-08-03T19:55:24.160Z

Discussion article for the meetup : San Jose Start of College Meetup

WHEN:
27 August 2011 02:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
San Jose State University

I head up to school this week and i wanted to gauge the interest in a meetup in the area :) I have a couple viable ideas for location but before i lock down my choices id appreciate input. -Matt

Edit:
As of 8-24 we are meeting in the CS club room which if i remember correctly is third floor macquarrie hall on campus.

Discussion article for the meetup : San Jose Start of College Meetup
Meetup : Seattle Biweekly meetup
by jsalvatier — 2011-08-03T18:26:45.078Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Biweekly meetup

WHEN:
07 August 2011 04:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE:
414 50th St NE, Seattle, WA

The biweekly meetup is happening at the regular place and time. Agenda:

Guy will be giving a presentation on: Bounded altruism and modeling yourself as a parliament of subagents.

In an effort to discuss more introductory material, I will be leading a reading/discussion of Words As Hidden Inferences.

We will be ordering take out again, so please bring some cash if you would like to eat.

The official end of the meetup will be 6:30pm, but people are welcome to stay and hang out after that.

Looking forward to seeing you guys!

Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Biweekly meetup
Meetup : London mini-meetup
by Paul Crowley — 2011-08-03T18:17:15.313Z

Discussion article for the meetup : London mini-meetup

WHEN:
07 August 2011 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE:
Shakespeares Head, Africa House, 64-68 Kingsway, City of London WC2B 6AG, United Kingdom

Sorry for the late notice: the next London mini-meetup is on Sunday August 7 at 14:00 at the Shakespeares Head (official page) on Kingsway near Holborn Tube station. Note that there's more than one pub in London with that name, so make sure you get the right one. As always, we'll have a big picture of a paperclip on the table so you can find us; I look like this. For more timely notice, subscribe to the London Less Wrong mailing list. We are aiming to have a "full" meetup on the Sunday of every other month, with other gatherings on the first and third Sunday of every month. Hope to see lots of you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : London mini-meetup
[LINK] Get paid to train your rationality
by XFrequentist — 2011-08-03T15:01:48.056Z

A tournament is currently being initiated by the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity (IARPA) with the goal of improving forecasting methods for global events of national (US) interest. One of the teams (The Good Judgement Team) is recruiting volunteers to have their forecasts tracked. Volunteers will receive an annual honorarium ($150), and it appears there will be ongoing training to improve one's forecast accuracy (not sure exactly what form this will take).

I'm registered, and wondering if any other LessWrongers are participating/considering it. It could be interesting to compare methods and results.

Extensive quotes and links below the fold.

Despite its importance in modern life, forecasting remains (ironically) unpredictable. Who is a good forecaster? How do you make people better forecasters? Are there processes or technologies that can improve the ability of governments, companies, and other institutions to perceive and act on trends and threats? Nobody really knows.

The goal of the Good Judgment Project is to answer these questions. We will systematically compare the effectiveness of different training methods (general education, probabilistic-reasoning training, divergent-thinking training) and forecasting tools (low- and high-information opinion-polls, prediction market, and process-focused tools) in accurately forecasting future events. We also will investigate how different combinations of training and forecasting work together. Finally, we will explore how to more effectively communicate forecasts in ways that avoid overwhelming audiences with technical detail or oversimplifying difficult decisions.

Over the course of each year, forecasters will have an opportunity to respond to 100 questions, each requiring a separate prediction, such as “How many countries in the Euro zone will default on bonds in 2011?” or “Will Southern Sudan become an independent country in 2011?” Researchers from the Good Judgment Project will look for the best ways to combine these individual forecasts to yield the most accurate “collective wisdom” results. Participants also will receive feedback on their individual results.

All training and forecasting will be done online. Forecasters’ identities will not be made public; however, successful forecasters will have the option to publicize their own track records.

W

...
[SEQ RERUN] Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions
by MinibearRex — 2011-08-03T04:54:33.647Z

Today's post, Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions was originally published on 25 August 2007. A summary:

The theory of vitalism was developed before the idea of biochemistry. It stated that the mysterious properties of living matter, compared to nonliving matter, was due to an "elan vital". This explanation acts as a curiosity-stopper, and leaves the phenomenon just as mysterious and inexplicable as it was before the answer was given. It feels like an explanation, though it fails to constrain anticipation.

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 Semantic Stopsigns, 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.
Meetup : Ottawa LessWrong Weekly Meetup
by XFrequentist — 2011-08-02T20:28:34.378Z

Discussion article for the meetup : Ottawa LessWrong Weekly Meetup

WHEN:
04 August 2011 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE:
K1S 3K3

Venue: My house! Check the google group for the address, or PM/email me.

Discussion post: Diseased Thinking - My personal favorite LW article. If someone prefers something else for discussion, please suggest away!

Exercise: Paranoid Debating and/or Rejection Therapy

Discussion article for the meetup : Ottawa LessWrong Weekly Meetup
Rationality Quotes August 2011
by dvasya — 2011-08-02T20:24:34.790Z

Here's the new quotes thread, for all those quotes you were going to post.

Rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

Do not quote yourself.

Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.

No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.