Open thread, March 17-31, 2013

On the weekends we play bayesball.

Trying to think of a common locations where Conspiracies could be held I first thought of schools, hospitals, churches, parks, museums, libraries, theaters and auditoriums. But those are all the wrong answer. They pale in awesomeness next to the true solution.

It should be underground. It should have an aura of sacredness. It should be heavily decorated with reminders of the human brain. It should be ... a catacomb! Sweet glucose, why don't we make labyrinthine tombs beneath our cities anymore?

And sewers do not count! I am not reading about Dirichlet-multinomial distributions by candlelight next to a river of human waste. Never again!

But it has already got a name. I mean...

I am not sure, but I think it may depend somewhat on the project type. There are certain projects where it seems like focusing on being aware of what you are doing makes it harder to do then just focusing on doing it. For instance, during this post, I periodically noticed myself concentrating on typing, and it seemed like it was making it harder to type than when I am just typing.

I believe this is called flow (if not, it seems similar) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29

So it may be that what they are doing when setting that up is to be in a more flow minded mood when it comes to Quantified Self, and since flow is an enjoyable state, usually it ends up working out well.

But I suppose it is also possible to be in a flow minded mood about something for longer necessary, which you would think would be called overflow, and which would seem to link with what you are mentioning, but that doesn't actually seem to be the name of that failure mode.

I've been wanting to do something like this. Does anyone know a good random reminders program for Windows?

Is this an advertisement? Are you the author, or do you copperate with the author?

Spaced repetition, Anki-style flash cards. Do they work because they present to you the information you're just starting to forget in just the right moment? Or maybe their success is (also?) due to placing you in the stressful situation of trying to recall in a competition-like setting? Contrast spaced repetition flash cards that just repeat data to you vs. those that ask you to recall with a question/answer format. If the hypothesis is correct, the latter will be much more successful.

Active elicitation and testing does work better than mere exposure; see http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition#background-testing-works and also search for 'feedback'.

Take no money and no credit cards.

I have a similar experience... around two years ago, both my laptop and desktop power supplies died (power surge), leaving me a pII-300... with which I had some "let's be authentic nineties" fun previously, so Win98 and Office 97. Except for the browser (lots of websites didn't even load on IE4-ish browsers), so I ended up with Firefox 3.x (the newest that ran on win98).

It actually took long times with 100% CPU to render web sites. And then further time to scroll them.

My observation is the same as yours: there is nothing better to discourage random web browsing than it being inconvinient. I could look up everything I needed to stay productive, I just didn't want to, because it was soo slow. (Having a smartphone + a non-networked computer seems to have the same effect, but with phones getting too fast nowadays, the difference seems to be diminishing...)

It mostly works for me most of the time, but once in a while I end up spending hours reading timewasters on my phone.

I go to one of these restaurants perhaps once every six weeks, and on each occasion I leave something like this. I've actually started to value it as an outlet for whatever's been rattling around my head at the time.

I love it. Sounds like you have fun (and they regularly get your money).

I think the general ontological category for center-of-mass is "derived fact". I'd put energy calculations about an object in the same category.

If the particles in the object contain 1000 bits of information, then the combined system of the object and it's center of mass contains exactly 1000 bits of information. The center-of-mass doesn't tell you anything new about the object, it's just a way of measuring something about it.

Or instead of bits of information, think about it in terms of particle positions and velocities. If you have an N-particle system, and you know where N-1 particles and the center of mass are, then you can figure out where the last particle is.

Ha, you mentioned that at the meetup, and I've remembered what I meant to say: you've read this classic Dennett paper, right? If I recall correctly (haven't reread it in years) it might be directly relevant.

Regarding the note, in statistics you could call that a population parameter. While parameters that are used are normally things like "mean" or "standard deviation", the definition is broad enough that "the centre of mass of a collection of atoms" plausibly fits the category.

I doubt that a less daft person would want it.

Inspired by this, I wrote a quick fic in this vein on fanfiction.net. This is the first real piece of fiction I wrote in quite a while, but for a few weeks now I was thinking I should write something. When I came across this, it galvanized me into actual action. So, thanks for posting this, as you got me to actually get started and not procrastinate forever. I am afraid the quality is not terribly high, as like I said this is my first work of fiction in almost a decade, and I did not write very prolifically back then either, to say the least.

But if you unsure of your quality, it is better to just publish it, and who knows, maybe someone will like it, and at least you get practice. I am by no means claiming to be anywhere nearly on the level of HPMOR, but at least maybe someone will derive a bit of joy from it.

I don't think a true rationalist story HPMOR style is the best fit for the Magic Schoolbus world, so this is more in the style of what CAE_Jones said, a repackaging of the sequences in the form of a wacky third grade adventures. Except that stories have a life of their own, and while when I started this story was about the affect heuristic, it morphed beyond all recognition, and now is about signaling, Robin Hanson style.

For what it's worth, here is the link.

I would totally read a the Rationalist Schoolbus.

I could see it being a repackaging of the sequences in the context of whacky third-grade adventures. And That would be awesome.

Although, keeping the original elements--the bus, a lizard who seems to display superlizard intelligence, and an ambiguously magical teacher--would beg actual overarching plot in a rationalist context.

1.It would need to first prime me for depression and then somehow convince me that I really should kill myself.

1. If it manages to do that it can easily extend the argument that all of humanity should be killed.
   3.I will easily accept the second proposition if I am already willing to kill myself.

It could convince me to let it out by convincing me that it was merely a paperclip maximizer, and the next AI who would rule the light cone if I did not let it out was a torture maximizer.

An assumption that is often made is that the AGI will need to convince the gatekeeper that it is friendly.

By whom? I don't think I've made this assumption.

The AGI would simply have to prove to me that all self-consistent moral systems require killing humanity.

The AGI would have to convince me that my fundamental belief of myself wanting to be alive is wrong, seeing as I am part of humanity. And even if it leaves me alive, it should convince me that I derive negative utility from humanity existing. All the art lost, all the languages, cultures, all music, all dreams and hopes ...

Oh and it would have to convince me that it is not a lot more convenient to simply delete it that to guard it.

Just in case anyone who upvoted this thinks differently: I can only take upvotes as "This is a mildly interesting and/or good idea, but not enough for me to actually be interested in participating in."

If by chance any of you feel more strongly about it, please let me know with words! :)

What's exactly the claim? Sometimes people feel a tickly feeling somewhere in their body?

The whole thing reminds me of Franz Anton Mesmer.

The proposed way to induce ASMR is to listen to a whisphery voice or meaningless noises of haircuttting. If you do that you induce a light trance.

Sometimes when you induce a light trance some muscle in the head will relax and that will produce a tickly feeling. If you however give specific suggestion that your subject will feel a tickly feeling in the head and the subject has decent hypnotic suggestibility they will feel the feeling every time.

I don't see the big mystery or the need for a crude extra term like ASMR.

I only heard about it recently, and did not think I ever experienced it/was capable of experiencing it. I was reading the /r/asmr reddit the other day, and saw a reference to "the goosebumps you get from really good music", and then got an ASMR-like response. Not sure if it was a true reaction, and I was listening to music that wouldn't fit with the usual description of ASMR triggers. I'm pretty suggestible I think, so it may have been the effect of remembering "really good music goosebumps" and then overreacting to that.

I experience ASMR and have sometimes used it to help me fall asleep when taking melatonin would be inconvenient. I have a pair of SleepPhones that I use for this and for lucid dream induction.

Act 2 of this episode of This American Life is the story of a person who experienced ASMR for years in response to certain quiet sounds -- and would spend hours seeking out things to trigger it -- before she knew that other people experienced it too and had come up with a name for it.

I've never heard of this before but reading the article reminded me of an experience I had in a Pentecostal setting. I was praying for the Holy Spirit to make me speak in tongues. I was very concentrated and prayed a chant over and over. I was lying in my bed and my chest started tingling. It was sort of like how your leg feels when it falls asleep. I also felt physical warmth and muscle relaxation, and lot of pleasure. The tingling spread all over my body and I became paralyzed. But it felt good so I didn't care.

I re-induced it lots of times until I saw a Darren Brown video and concluded that my effect came from a placebo and God wasn't real.After I had been an atheist for a few months, I successfully re-induced it. But the novelty has worn-off and I don't do it anymore.

I'm also curious, and would like to add a poll: [pollid:420]

I'm fond of #3. That said, if I'm asking someone to do a substantive amount of work, I should expect to compensate them for it.

I'd be leery of #5 were I being interviewed... the implicit task is really "Figure out what the interviewer thinks the right thing to do in this situation is, then give them a response that is close enough to that" rather than "Explain what the right thing to do in this situation is." If I cared a lot about interpersonal skills, I'd adopt approach #3 here as well: if what i want to confirm is that they can collaborate, or get information from someone, or convey information to someone, or whatever, then I would ask them to do that.

Q&A mostly tells me about their priorities. I'm fond of "What would you prefer a typical workday to consist of?" for this reason... there are lots of different "good" answers, and which one they pick tells me a lot about what they think is important.

I'm also fond of "Tell me about a time when you X" style questions... I find I get less bullshit when they focus on particular anecdotes.

The average interview process is in my opinion broken because what I find happens a lot is that interviewers un-methodologically "feel out" the person in a short amount of time.

A related finding from I-O psychology: structured interviews are less noisy and better predict job performance than unstructured interviews (although unstructured interviews are better than nothing).

Well, it's been suggested in fiction, anyway - consider the Stable vs Ultimates faction in the TechnoCore of Simmon's Hyperion SF universe.

But the scenario trades on 2 dubious claims:

1. that an AI will have its own self-preservation as a terminal value (as opposed to, say, a frequently useful strategy which is unnecessary if it can replace itself with a superior AI pursuing the same terminal values)
2. that any concept of selfhood or self-preservation excludes growth or development or self-modification into a superior AI

Without #2, there's no real distinction to be made between the present and future AIs. Without #1, there's no reason for the AI to care about being replaced.

I think you'd like a more comprehensive response than this, but hopefully my very generalised recollection of survey basics will at least help others answer more specifically.

• Survey Questions
  Priming, or the avoidance of it, is as you might be aware essential to drafting an unbiased survey. Consider question placement, wording, phrasing, and most importantly selection when drafting each enquiry, and do the same for the answers.
  Key is to ask oneself whether a question and/or its composite answers will yield credible information, and the value of that information in answering the question to which the survey was orginally purposed.

• Survey Sample
  The aim is to have as many respondents as possible answer the survey as truthfully as possible. If feasible, give the survey to everyone. Of course, the manner in which one does so might affect answer credibility. If infeasible, cleverly randomise.

The first logistical thought that comes to mind:
You pretend the survey is for an experiment on efficacy, and as you respect the opinions of your fellow organisation members you'd like their responses as well as honest data on the present state of things efficient. Promise anonymity, actually make it your own experiment a bit (so you're only equivocating), and disseminate the survey at a time members are most likely to respond. Maybe afterwards you may disclose the survey's full purpose.

Drawbacks to the above are numerous, but to list just a few: with actual anonymity randomisation cannot be tested ex post facto; respondents may be the least or most efficient members of the population; truthfulness and number of respondents is subject to fluctuation due to their valuation of your person.

I genuinely request you let me know if this helps at all (I assume not, but decided to err in favour of pedantry).

Total, abject failure. Mental illness. Sometimes leading to suicide. Having the most talented of their peer group switch to something they are less likely to waste their whole life on with nothing to show, and the next most talented switch to something else because they are frustrated with the incompetence of the people who remain. Turning into cranks with a 24/7 vanity google alert so that they can instantly show up to spam time cube esque nonsense whenever someone makes the mistake of mentioning them by name. Mail bombs from anarchoprimitivist math PhDs.

being rational in social situations

Can you clarify what you mean by this? (My guess is that you're indulging in some nearsighted consequentialism here.)

With alcohol drinking, there is a risk that you will get drunk and do something really stupid

Doing stupid things while drunk can be fun. You can get good stories out of it, and it can promote bonding (e.g. in the typical stereotype of a college fraternity). Danger can be exciting, and getting really drunk is the easiest way for young people in otherwise comfortable situations to get it.

Edit: I'm uncomfortable with the way you're tossing around the word "irrational" in this comment. Rationality is about winning. Are the people you're calling irrational systematically failing to win, or are they just using a different definition of winning than you are? Are you using "rationality" to refer to winning, or are you using it to refer to a collection of cached thoughts / applause lights / tribal signals? (This is directed particularly at "smart-but-irrational people who make big money selling some products to irrational people around them...")

I remain sober at alcohol filled parties all the time and do fine.

A good example for the sometimes conflicting relationship between epistemic rationality (e.g. updating on all relevant pieces of information you encounter) and instrumental rationality (e.g. following the optimal route to your goal (=winning the match)).

In principle the information regarding your opponent's skill is very useful, since you'll correctly devote far more resources (time) to checking for elaborate traps when you deem your opponent capable of such, and waste less time until you accept an 'obvious' mistake, when committed by a far inferior opponent.

However, due to anxiety issues as the ones you laid out, there can be a benefit to willfully ignoring such information.

Also, per your wish,

• superior opponent: confident
• slightly superior opponent: confident
• slightly inferior opponent: neutral
• inferior opponent: nervous

The thing about your performance in a game being hurt by fear of a superior opponent's skill is basically the same as David Sirlin's idea of a "fear aura."

If your aim is to intimidate the opponent, then I am all for that. But there are polite, sportsman-like ways of doing this. The best way by far is to win tournaments. See what your next opponent thinks of you then. Just give him something as simple as a half-hearted glance and empty-sounding “good luck” before the match and he will probably fall over like a feather from your presence. When a player radiates a sense of total dominance at a game, I call this a “fear aura.” The most unlikely of pale, white computer geeks can strike fear into the hearts of other gamers when they discover that he is, in fact, “PhatDan09” or whatever name is known to dominate tournaments. With the fear aura, he is able to get away with gambits and maneuvers no ordinary player could ever pull off, just because the opponent gives him the extreme benefit of the doubt on everything that occurs in the game. If the wielder of the fear aura appears to be vulnerable, perhaps it is just what he wants you to think. It might be safer to hesitate, and then—oops—to lose. Once you develop your fear aura through excellent play and winning, you will laugh at the relatively ineffective notion of intimidating opponents with offensive verbal comments.

From the experience derived in many years of competitive Magic: the Gathering, I think I have a diferent map.

• Superior opponent: Nervous - Very Focused
• Approximately my skill opponent / Unknown opponent (no precise rating available): Confident - Very Focused
• Inferior opponent: Confident - Not Focused

As can be inferred, I usually play my best game with opponents that are roughly my equal. Some of the difficoulties can be overcome by means of intense practice, i.e. making most of the decisions automatic, lessening the risk to punt them. It's also interesting to note, that my anxiety for playing against strogner opponents lessens itself if I get to know them. Probably my brains moves them from the "superhuman/demigod" box to the "human just like you" box allowing a clearer view of the situation.

• Hedonistic Utilitarianism - produce the most pleasure.
• Actual (not necessarily revealed) Preferences
• Ideal preferences - produce the most of what people want to want, or would want under ideal reflective circumstances
• Welfare Utilitarianism - produce the most welfare, which may differ from preferences if people don't want what's best for them.
• Ideal Utilitarianism - outcomes can have value regardless of our attitude towards them

In every kind of utilitarianism, including revealed preference, utilities are assigned to outcomes. The varieties I've described, and revealed preference, just disagree about how to assign values to outcomes.

201-808-6011

Drop me a line whenever.

As promised, the answers rot13 here so people can still choose to play, and unsullied so you can verify the hash

My answers (2nd, unsubmitted guess in brackets)

1. Gbbgu
2. Fpnes (Synt)
3. Svban Oehpr (Hyevxn Wbuaffba)
4. Vgnyl (Jnyrf)
5. Wnpx Fcneebj (Oynpx orneq)

Correct answers:

1. Gbbgu (grrgu npprcgrq)
2. Synt
3. Qnivan Znppnhy
4. Fcnva
5. Wnpx Fcneebj

Individual.

1. Nccraqvk
2. Synt
3. Qnivan ZpPnyy
4. Jnyrf
5. Oynpxorneq

Fun post. I'm not a fan of the show really, but it's a neat idea. Have you seen Pointless? It's almost the reverse of Family Fortunes.

1. nccraqvk
2. sbnz svatre
3. xngvr pbhevp
4. vgnyl
5. oynpxorneq

1. grrgu
2. onaare
3. Ubyyl Jvyybhtuol
4. Puvan
5. Oynpxorneq

I'm not British and not that familiar with British popular culture, so number 3 is hard. My answer is based on a couple of minutes of googling.

1. nccraqvk, 2. synt, 3. Xngvr Pbhevp, 4. Puvan, 5. Wnpx Fcneebj

I'm slightly confident in two of my answers (rot13): 1. unve, 5. Oynpxorneq, and would not be surprised if 4. Vgnyl was right (or alternatively Fcnva if the poll was taken earlier in the year). I'm not even going to bother guessing the other two, as the only way I'd have a chance is to do a lot of research.

a1c2b7ae7c4e56188eb3dbd96cdf46ecb4bdaf81

I expect Less Wrong people to be more "normal" than me though so... oh well.

b89926c684b2637444b34430c3ab1718bec22da2

*awaits "EH-EHHH!" noise *

A CDT agent who is given the choice to self-modify at time t will not self-modify completely into a UDT agent. After self-modification, the agent will one-box in a Newcomb's problem where Omega made its prediction by examining the agent after time t, and will two-box in a Newcomb's problem where Omega made its prediction by examining the agent before time t, even if Omega knew that the agent would have the opportunity to self-modify.

In other words, the CDT agent can self-modify to stop updating, but it isn't motivated to un-update.

You're capable of arbitrarily strong precommitments.

Using UDT is one way of going about making those precommitments. You precommit to make the decision that you expect will give you the most utility, on average, even if CDT says that you will do worse this time around.

The literature largely defines CDT as incapable of precommitments. If you want to propose a specific model of how to choose commitments, just do it.

Hrm. Robot takes the Ghandi murder pill. http://www.dilbert.com/2013-04-03/

This only works for non-zero karma.

The source code of the pages contains hypothetical % positive for the cases when a comment gets upvoted or downvoted by 1 point, so sufficient information about comments with zero karma is always present as well.

I think it's a very common trait, but any Evo psych explanation I know would probably just be a just-so story.

Just So Story: The consequence of getting angry is treating someone badly, or from a game theoretical perspective, punishing them. Your perception of someone playing status games with low skill is a manifestation of the zero sum nature of status in tribes: Someone playing with low skill is a low status person trying to act and receive the benefits of being higher status, and it behooves you to punish them, in order to preserve or increase your own status. It's easier for evolution to select for emotional reactions to things than for game theoretical calculations.

I've noticed that I seem to get really angry at people when I observe them playing the status game with what I perceive as poor skill.

My suspicion: status games are generally seen as zero sum. Someone attempting to play the status game around you is a threat, and thus it probably helps to be angry with them, unless you expect them to be better than you at status games, in which case being angry with them probably reduces the chance that they'll be your ally, and they will be able to respond more negatively to your anger than a weaker opponent.

Not sure if related, but I often get angry at people doing things that make them look like idiots in my eyes, but I have a suspicion they would impress a random bystander positively.

As an example, imagine a computer programmer speaking things that you as a fellow programmer recognize as a complete bullshit, or at best as wild exaggerations of random things that impressed the person... but for someone who does not understand programming at all, they might (I am not sure) sound very knowledgeable, unlike the silent types like me. -- I don't know if they really impress the outsiders positively or not. I can't well imagining myself not having the knowledge I have, and I am also not good at guessing how other people react to the tone of voice or whatever other information they may collect from the talk about topic they don't understand. -- I just perceive the danger that the person may sound more impressive than me, and... well, as an employee, my quality of life depends on the impressions of people who can't measure my output separately from the output of the team containing also the other person.

Also, again not sure if related, when I get angry at someone, when I analyze the situation I usually find that they are better than me in something. In the specific situation above, it would be "an ability to impress people who completely don't understand my work". This is easy to miss, if I remain focused only on the "they speak nonsense" part. But the truth is their speaking nonsense does not make me angry; it's relatively easy to ignore, and it would not bother me if I did not perceive a threat.

So, for your situation: are you afraid that the "people playing the status game with (supposedly) poor skill" might still win some status at your expense? If yes, the angry reaction is obvious: you are in a situation where you could lose, but you could also win; which is the best situation to invest your energy in. (Imagine an alternative universe, where the person trying to play the status game is completely harmless and ridiculous, and everyone openly agrees on that. Would you feel the same anger?)

Not an explanation, but perhaps try to see this as a benefit to you? I have witnessed plenty of poker players get very angry at bad players. Over time bad players lose money to good players, so one shouldn't complain about bad players. Someone who is ineffective at status signalling won't affect you, you already see through them.

Personally, I find that I have an admiration for people with skill, even in things such as effective status signalling. When people lack a certain savoir-faire about them, it makes me upset, but then I remind myself I shouldn't.

Many companies including mine use Yammer, a twitter-like app internally. At my big bureaucratic company I've seen a mix of practical discussion and discussion about the future of the company, but I'm not sure how much difference it makes in practice.

Closest thing I can think of is the "We the people" White House site, at least nominally.

This should probably go in the politics thread.

Assuming the premises of the situation, yes to your first question:

1. He may be argued into something that is not in his interest by the UFAI. (On the other hand, Rock-Placing Man evidently does not have a standard mental and physical architecture, so maybe he also happens to be immune to such attacks.)

2. The UFAI may take over his simulated universe and turn it into simulated paperclips.

You mean run them so slowly that they're not useful for anything?

More discussion of it here.

I suspect there's too much of a difference in how much LW members know about basketball to get particularly wide participation. For example, I had to look up "March Madness" to figure out what this is about.

Also, there's a significant chance that either people would just copy the odds from Pinnacle, or maybe even arbitrage against it (valuing karma or whatever at 1-2 cents). Or, well, I'd certainly be tempted to =]

An interesting thing would be to set up a prediction market and compare the results

Less Wrong is about rationality. Surely there are better ways to have fun than to arbitrarily redistribute our wealth. Unless you somehow plan to make some of the money go to charity, or not involve money at all, I don't see the point.

But they didn't have full understanding of the new colour before having it added!

a short history of nearly everything jonathan strange and mr norrrel the automatic detective guards guards

Hrm. As I understand it, the theory underlying CEV doesn't equate X's best interest with X's desires in the first place, so the question is somewhat confusingly -- and perhaps misleadingly -- worded. That is, the answer might well be "both". That said, it doesn't claim AFAIK that the end results will actually be what every individual currently desires.

Does CEV claim that all goals will eventually cohere such that the end results will actually be in every individual's best interest? Or does CEV just claim that it's a good compromise as being the closest we can get to satisfying everyone's desires?

The latter.