Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015

I'm in the process of reading Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". It's interesting but it is quite dated. Is there a 21st cenutry book on the history and philosophy of science that you would recommend?

Excepts from ''Explaining and inducing savant skills: privileged access to lower level, less-processed information'' by Allan Snyder, available here

There are now several accounts of artificially induced savant-like skills, in drawing, proofreading, numerosity and false memory reduction, all by inhibiting the LATL with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS; Snyder et al. 2003, 2006; Young et al. 2004; Gallate et al. 2009).

(i) Why does becoming more literal enhance numerosity?

We argue that the estimation of number by normal people is performed on information after it has been processed into meaningful patterns. The meaning we unconsciously assign to these patterns interferes with our accuracy of estimation, whereas savants, by virtue of being literal, have less interference.

This insight has an important generalization. The healthy brain makes hypotheses in order to extract meaning from the sensory input, hypotheses derived from prior experience (Gregory 1970, 2004; Snyder & Barlow 1988; Snyder et al. 2004). So judgements in general are likely to be performed on this hypothesized content, not on the actual raw sensory input. This suggests the possibility of artificially reducing certain types of false memories and prejudice by making a person more literal, as well as enhancing creativity (Snyder et al. 2004).

The majority of savants are autistic. Why not all? Autistic spectrum disorders encompass a hugely diverse population. However, it may well be that autistic savants represent autism in its purest form, uncontaminated by learned algorithms and other disorders that are frequently associated with autism. In other words, autistic savants typify an idealized, pure autism, most closely identified with Kanner's (1943) infantile autism—a mind in a protracted state of infancy (Snyder et al. 2004), a preconceptual mind that thinks in detail, rather than through concepts. This oversimplifying caricature goes some way to explain why all autistic people are not savants.

But, creativity would seem to require that we, at least momentarily, free ourselves of previous interpretations. Such literalness is a consequence of privileged access and thus gives insights into the so-called autistic genius (Snyder 2004) as well as hints to artificially enhance creativity (Snyder et al. 2004).

The classical portrait of autism is that of rigid insistence on sameness, rote memory and significant learning disabilities. Even autistic savants are the antithesis of creative, being largely imitative: ‘there are no savant geniuses about… Their mental limitations disallow and preclude an awareness of innovative developments’. (Hermelin 2001, p. 177).

The fact that genius might fall within the autistic spectrum challenges our deepest notions of creativity. Are there radically different routes to creativity: normal and autistic? The autistic mind builds from the parts to the whole—a strategy ideally suited to working within a closed system of specified rules. By contrast, the ‘healthy’ mind appears to make unexpected connections between seemingly disparate systems, inventing entire new systems rather than finding novelty within a previously prescribed space

I just (in, say, the last couple of days) got something like 50 downvotes, presumably all on old comments since I don't see any sign of a lot of downvotes on recent comments of mine.

This is the kind of thing that has got people banned in the past; if any moderator happens to be reading this and considers it worth investigating, I'd be interested to know the result.

I made this joke site: https://flashcash.money

It's often rational to burn cash on positional goods like Rolexes and bottle service at clubs, but FlashCash.money takes that value proposition to the logical extreme.

What is a computation? Intuitively some (say binary) states of the physical world are changed, voltage gates switched, rocks moved around (https://xkcd.com/505/), whatever.
Now, in general if these physical changes were done with some intention like in my CPU or the guy moving the rocks in the xkcd comic, then I think of this as a computation, and consequentially I would care for example about if the computation I performed simulated a conscious entity.

However, surely my or my computer's intention can't be what makes the physical state changes count as a computation. But then how do we get around the slippery slope where everything is computing everything imaginable. There are billions of states I can interpret as 1's and 0's which get transformed in countless different ways every time I stir my coffee. Even worse, in quantum mechanics, the state of a point is given by a potentially infinitely wiggly function. What stops me from interpreting all of this as computation which under some encoding gives rise to countless Boltzmann brain type conscious entities and simulated worlds?

Gene editing saves girl dying from leukaemia in world first

For the first time ever, a person’s life has been saved by gene editing.

...

Layla’s doctors got permission to use an experimental form of gene therapy using genetically engineered immune cells from a donor. Within a month these cells had killed off all the cancerous cells in her bone marrow.

Zombie physics: 6 baffling results that just won't die

To celebrate Halloween, Nature brings you the undead results that physicists can neither prove — nor lay to rest.

When a scientific result seems to show something genuinely new, subsequent experiments are supposed to either confirm it — triggering a textbook rewrite — or show it to be a measurement anomaly or experimental blunder. But some findings seem to remain forever stuck in the middle ground between light and shadow. Even efforts to replicate these results — normally science’s equivalent of Valyrian steel — have little effect. Welcome to the realm of undead physics.

Ahead of Halloween, Nature guides you through some findings in physics, astronomy and cosmology that researchers have repeatedly left for dead — only to find that they keep coming back.

Laszlo Babai (University of Chicago): Graph Isomorphism in Quasipolynomial Time (Combinatorics and TCS seminar)

We outline an algorithm that solves the Graph Isomorphism (GI) problem and the related problems of String Isomorphism (SI) and Coset Intersection (CI) in quasipolynomial (exp(polylog n)) time.

The best previous bound for GI was \exp(\sqrt{n log n}), where n is the number of vertices (Luks, 1983). For SI and CI the best previous bound was similar, \exp(\sqrt{n}(log n)^c), where n is the size of the permutation domain (the speaker, 1983).

G. Phi. Fo. Fum. by Scott Aaronson

Earlier today, I was tipped off to what might be the theoretical computer science result of the decade. My source asked me not to break the news on this blog—but since other theory bloggers (and twitterers) are now covering the story, I guess the graph is out of the Babai.

According to the University of Chicago’s theory seminar calendar, on Tuesday of next week (November 10), the legendary Laszlo Babai will be giving a talk about a new algorithm that solves the graph isomorphism problem in quasipolynomial time. The previous fastest algorithm to decide whether two n-vertex graphs G and H are isomorphic—by Babai and Luks, back in 1983—ran in exp(√(n log n)) time. If we credit the announcement, Babai has now gotten that down to exp(polylog(n)), putting one of the central problems of computer science “just barely above P.” (For years, I’ve answered questions on this blog about the status of graph isomorphism—would I bet that it’s in BQP? in coNP? etc.—by saying that, as far as I and many others are concerned, it might as well just be in P. Of course I’m happy to reaffirm that conjecture tonight.)

An unusually clear discussion of the failings of the p-values and what you can (or can not) expect from them. The author seems to have a slight allergy to the Bayesian approach though he freely acknowledges that what he is using is, in fact, the Bayesian approach :-/

What are time-efficient ways of finding people with similar interests and skills to cooperate with?

I have a foggy memory of someone here (I think it was gwern) linking to an article about simulation interface design. It built up examples based on a bird's eye view of a car steering down a road. I haven't been able to find it, anyone know a link to the article?

Does anyone have any good recommended reading on being social? Stuff like understanding social situations and how to respond appriopriately. Understanding personality types and how to engage with them. How to make people like you can how to keep people's attention. I'd really love to learn these skills , as I feel I am deficient at them.

Posting here to avoid introducing an irrelevant aside on one of the main [ETA: Discussion-main, not Main-main] threads, regarding the "retrocausality" of Newcomb-like problems.

Causality is always bidirectional. It is information which only goes in one direction. Once you dissolve that distinction, the question is one of information, which doesn't need to involve any strange loops at all; the behavior of Newcomb-like problems isn't produced by your actions changing history, but by information about what your action will be changing the future, or having already changed it.

What's lost is that this kind of forward-facing information is at play all the time; pretty much every single one of us constantly does low-level prediction of everyone around them (avoiding running into people by predicting where they are going to walk, for a particularly low-level example), and usually (but not always) gets it right. What's unusual in Newcomb-like problems isn't the predictive element, but the uncanny accuracy of that prediction. But if somebody could predict with uncanny accuracy somebody's behavior in the future, we wouldn't resort to retrocausality as an explanation, but rather very good predictive power.

Which is to say, once you notice there is nothing particularly interesting or necessarily reality-violating happening in Newcomb, the issue dissolves substantially, and two-boxing as a statement of the value of human autonomy is about as meaningful as turning suddenly and walking into traffic because the fact that the drivers of cars anticipate that you aren't going to do that is some kind of affront to human dignity.

It looks like letting math students flounder for a while before telling them how to solve a problem helps them learn.

Is Economics Research Replicable? Sixty Published Papers from Thirteen Journals Say “Usually Not” by Andrew C. Chang and Phillip Li

We attempt to replicate 67 papers published in 13 well-regarded economics journals using author-provided replication files that include both data and code. Some journals in our sample require data and code replication files, and other journals do not require such files. Aside from 6 papers that use confidential data, we obtain data and code replication files for 29 of 35 papers (83%) that are required to provide such files as a condition of publication, compared to 11 of 26 papers (42%) that are not required to provide data and code replication files. We successfully replicate the key qualitative result of 22 of 67 papers (33%) without contacting the authors. Excluding the 6 papers that use confidential data and the 2 papers that use software we do not possess, we replicate 29 of 59 papers (49%) with assistance from the authors. Because we are able to replicate less than half of the papers in our sample even with help from the authors, we assert that economics research is usually not replicable. We conclude with recommendations on improving replication of economics research.

It is interesting to compare the Less Wrong and Wikipedia articles on Recursive self improvement: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Recursive_self-improvement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_self-improvement I still find the anti-foom arguments based on diminishing returns in the Wikipedia article to be compelling. Has there been any progress on modelling recursively self improving systems systems beyond what we can find in the foom-debate?

I've recently started using RSS feeds. Does anyone have LW-related feeds they'd recommend? Or for that matter, anything they'd recommend following which doesn't have an RSS feed?

Here's my short list so far, in case anyone else is interested:

• Less Wrong Discussion

• Less Wrong Main (ie promoted)

• Slate Star Codex

• Center for the Study of Existential Risk

• Future of Life Institute [they have a RSS button, but it appears to be broken. They just updated their webpage, so I'll subscribe once there's something to subscribe to.]

• Global Priorities Project

• 80,000 Hours

• SpaceX [an aerospace company, which Elon Musk refuses to take public until they've started a Mars colony]

These obviously have an xrisk focus, but feel free to share anything you think any Less-Wrongers might be interested in, even if it doesn't sound like I would be.

For anyone looking to start using RSS, I'd recommend using the Bamboo Feed Reader extension in FireFox, and deleting all the default feeds. I started out using Sage as a feed aggregator, but didn't like the sidebar style or the tiled reader.

From Omnilibrium:

• Should the public trust climatologists in the global warming debate?

• Will Augur be the first successful decentralised prediction market?

NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses

A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”

This is the most terrifying comic SMBC has made yet How much of a point does Zach have, here? Can this be the shape of the future?

If you had to select just 5 mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive variables to predict the the outcome of something you have expert knowledge (relative to say...me) about:

• what is that situation?

• what are the 5 things that best determine the outcome?

  Please tell us about multiple things if you are an expert at multple things. No time for humility know, it is better that you are kind teacher than a modest mute.

If you can come up with a better way I could ask this, please point it out! It sounds clumsy, but the question has a rather technical background to it's composition:

Research on expert judgement indicates experts are just as bad as nonexperts in some counterintuitive ways, like predicting the outcome of a thing, but consistently good at identifying the determinants that are important to consider in a given thing within their field of expertise, such as what are the variables that determine a given thing. The human working memory can only hold 7+/-2 things at a given time. So, tending to even more stressful situations where our memories may be situanionally brought down to a level of functioning commiserate with someone with a poorer memory, I want to ask for 5 things anyone could think about when they come across one or more of your niches of expertise that they can pay attention to in order to gather the most relevant information from the experience

Top 4 web resources about the application of machine learning to public health:

As taught coursework

As a field of research

As independent scientific movements

In one computationally intensive field of public health

Feel free to add any non significantly overlapping, high quality resources in the comments, or to comment otherwise.

This may be a silly question, if complex regional pain syndrome is 47 out of 50 on the McGill pain scale, where would 'torture' be?

Identifying cognitive distortions

Psychologists someone's hand out a worksheet with the names of cognitive distortions. Ie: mentalising. It is usually encumbrance upon psychiatric patients to pick up on trends for these distortions themselves from what their psychologists tells them.

For instance, my psychologists might intuit that something is paranoid while I don't. That certainly kills that one belief after a bit of reflection, but my mind remains generally predisposed to paranoid thinking in the next moments of conscious ideation too. They will never catch up with me that way.

I went to library bathroom a few minutes ago. It's night, and someone just happened to be there. A fairly Innocuous thought persisted in my imagination that the person who happened to already be there might think I was there to trouble him, since it seemed unlikely that two people should be in the bathroom at the same time at this time of night. A psychologist would usually point out that that's not strictly the case, and challenging assumptions is the best way of addressing these beliefs as far as they and we've known since Socrates at least.

But the thought only become apparent as aberrant when I considered, upon privellaging the hypothesis that my thoughts are biased towards paranoia from past experience, after considering the opposite of my thought. If I had entered the bathroom before him, it would seem like he was falling me, in my mind, or that I was planning for his arrival. Only this last thought, that someone might actually wait for someone stood out as aberrant and odd at the time. But it is very similar in notion to the others and they have since till now gradually becoming notions I consider highly unlikely.

I reckon there's a rationality technique I could generalise from this. Or I hope.

There are 4 computer memory designers. One is a major phone manufacturer, one is a major computer manufacturer and one is a major car manufacturer. The fourth, crucial, makes computer memory for their competitors. I reckon this is best if only example of a stable large scale unregulated efficiency monopoly.

I wish I was clever enough to understand computer memory, get in on the open hard ware movement and capitalise on Project Aras forthcoming release early next year! Imagine, an AppStore for hardware, sponsored by Google for android!

I'm looking for an academic/science/technology enthusiast to cofound my new website with me.

Website is already built and nearing launch. I am looking for someone who can serve as an adviser and contribute directly to site content (I will explain the content in more detail to serious candidates). This will require knowing a lot about science, and a lot about how scientists think. He/she needs to be interested in new technologies and current events. From international affairs, economic policy, politics and ethical issues to cryptocurrency, biotech, physics and artificial intelligence- my ideal candidate will be a huge geek when it comes to these areas. I'm looking for an all around informed person who likes to research issues.

Ideally, you'll have experience in academia and/or science/tech.

I don't imagine this being a ton of work at first, it's just work that I need someone else to focus on. There will be equity. Message me if interested.

I want to learn to play the Dataridoo. Is Swirl the right choice if I want to graduate into a career in machine learning, but failed at learning Python, and managed to learn Stata? Also I'm shit at concentrating, and it's the only learning platform that doesn't confuse me with all the features. I kid you not I took months to figure out how to use LessWrong. I may be stupid, but I am dedicated. Once I find the best platform for me, I'll stick to it. But good recommendations now may save me months later.

So, apparently NLP is pseudoscience, and now I'm confused. Does anyone actually claim

• Richard Bandler hasn't demonstrated even a single verifiable, undisputable result with his methods, and he's been fabricating things like this for decades?
• his methods don't lead to his results in a way that matches his predictions?
• the creator of NLP is not qualified to decide whether or not his methods are NLP?

If there are no claims to any of the above, what exactly was discredited?

Health is good. Intelligence is sometimes associated with health. Wikipedia has two articles on the relationship between intelligence and health. The other is here. So wouldn't you want to know more about your intelligence?

Clarity's index of sometimes subtle neurological conditions that impair cognitive functionl

Kleine–Levin syndrome

a rare sleep disorder characterized by persistent episodic hypersomnia and cognitive or mood changes. Many patients also experience hyperphagia, hypersexuality and other symptoms.

KLS can be diagnosed when there is confusion, apathy, or derealization in addition to frequent bouts of extreme tiredness and prolonged sleep*

Vascular dementia

Patients suffering from vascular dementia present with cognitive impairment, acutely or subacutely as in mild cognitive impairment, after one or many cerebrovascular events. The symptoms of dementia may progress gradually or step-wise after each small stroke. Some people may appear to improve between events and decline after more silent strokes

Patients develop progressive cognitive, motor and behavioural signs and symptoms. A significant proportion also develop affective symptoms. These changes typically occur over a period of 5–10 years. If the frontal lobes are affected, which is often the case, patients may present as apathetic or abulic. This is often accompanied by problems with attention, orientation...

Binswanger's disease

This disease is characterized by loss of memory and intellectual function and by changes in mood. These changes encompass what are known as executive functions of the brain. It usually presents between 54 and 66 years of age, and the first symptoms are usually mental deterioration or stroke

Cortical dementia is atrophy of the cortex which affects ‘higher’ functions such as memory, language, and semantic knowledge whereas subcortical dementia affects mental manipulation, forgetfulness, and personality/emotional changes. Binswanger’s Disease has shown correlations with impairment in executive functions, but have normal episodic or declarative memory. Executive functions are brain processes that are responsible for planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, rule acquisition, initiating appropriate actions and inhibiting inappropriate actions, and selecting relevant sensory information. There have been many studies done comparing the mental deterioration of Binswanger patients and Alzheimer patients. It has been found in the Graphical Sequence Test that Binswanger patients have hyperkinetic perseveration errors which cause the patients to repeat motion even when not asked whereas Alzheimer patients have semantic preservation because when asked to write a word they will instead draw the object of the word.

Autism

• Different working memories

• includes Asperger syndrome:

Although individuals with Asperger syndrome acquire language skills without significant general delay and their speech typically lacks significant abnormalities, language acquisition and use is often atypical. Abnormalities include verbosity, abrupt transitions, literal interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance, use of metaphor meaningful only to the speaker, auditory perception deficits, unusually pedantic, formal or idiosyncratic speech, and oddities in loudness, pitch, intonation, prosody, and rhythm.[1] Echolalia has also been observed in individuals with AS. Pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest is one of the most striking possible features of AS. Three aspects of communication patterns are of clinical interest: poor prosody, tangential and circumstantial speech, and marked verbosity. According to the Adult Asperger Assessment (AAA) diagnostic test, a lack of interest in fiction and a positive preference towards non-fiction is common among adults with AS. peech may convey a sense of incoherence; the conversational style often includes monologues about topics that bore the listener, fails to provide context for comments, or fails to suppress internal thoughts. Individuals with AS may fail to detect whether the listener is interested or engaged in the conversation. The speaker's conclusion or point may never be made, and attempts by the listener to elaborate on the speech's content or logic, or to shift to related topics, are often unsuccessful. It maps well to general-processing theories such as weak central coherence theory, which hypothesizes that a limited ability to see the big picture underlies the central disturbance in ASD. Asperger called the condition "autistic psychopathy" and described it as primarily marked by social isolation

More on Central Coherence Theory here

Meningitis

In children there are several potential disabilities which may result from damage to the nervous system, including sensorineural hearing loss, epilepsy, learning and behavioral difficulties, as well as decreased intelligence. These occur in about 15% of survivors. Some of the hearing loss may be reversible. In adults, 66% of all cases emerge without disability. The main problems are deafness (in 14%) and cognitive impairment (in 10%).

The most common symptoms of meningitis are headache and neck stiffness associated with fever, confusion or altered consciousness, vomiting, and an inability to tolerate light (photophobia) or loud noises (phonophobia).

Meningitis can lead to serious long-term consequences such as deafness, epilepsy, hydrocephalus and cognitive deficits, especially if not treated quickly.[

Toxic encephalopathy

Consequence:

. Toxic encephalopathy has a wide variety of symptoms, which can include memory loss, small personality changes/increased irritability, insidious onset of concentration difficulties, involuntary movements, fatigue, seizures, arm strength problems, and depression

Accessibility:

In addition, chemicals, such as lead, that could instigate toxic encephalopathy are sometimes found in everyday products such as cleaning products, building materials, pesticides, air fresheners, and even perfumes. These harmful chemicals can be inhaled (in the case of air fresheners) or applied (in the case of perfumes)

Recovery:

Long term studies have demonstrated residual cognitive impairment (primarily attention and information-processing impairment resulting in dysfunction in working memory) up to 10 years following cessation of exposure

i reckon the reason i have admired and.imitated entrepreneurship, innovation and initiative above their market value, social and financial, is that it seems to signal reaponsibility, in spite of circumstanes for which their solution may not be apparent for a particular problem. But there are a whole class of.other values and hehaviours that entail.reaponsibility and I reckon the quality of those particular aforementioned signals to imply responsibility has and is decaying as I mature. Duty, and consistency, are the traits a value them on par with now, things I had neglected before.

Has anyone tried Gene partner to identify genetically suitable dates? I don't think it uses 23andme data though, those money grabbing rats want us to do their own test!

Even a MIRI researcher thinks the idea is good and profitable. The North American competitior is instant chem. There appears to be distrust for the idea, see Moran's comment in the criticism here

Also, any sperm donors on LW?