Open Thread, April 1-15, 2012

I don't have the karma to post this regularly. Grant me karma, my fellows.

Meetup: Twin Cities, MN (for real this time)

THE TIME: 15 April 2012 01:00:00PM (-0600) THE PLACE: Purple Onion Coffeeshop, 1301 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN

Hi. Let's make this work.

Suggested discussion topics would be:

What do we want this group to do? Rationality practice? Skill sharing? Mastermind group?
Acquiring guinea pigs for the furtherance of mad science (testing Center for Modern Rationality material)
Fun - what it is and how to have almost more of it than you can handle

If you'd like to suggest a location closer to you or a different time, please comment to that effect. If you know a good coffeeshop with ample seating in Uptown or South Minneapolis, we could meet there instead. Also comment if you'd like to carpool.

If you're even slightly interested in this, please join up or at least comment.

Folks, let's hang out and take it from there.

I would like to see a rational discussion about education and school system (elementary and high schools), but I don't know if it can be done on an international website. There are different rules in different countries, and often the devil is in the details -- for example you might think about an improvement to the education system, only to find out that there is a local law prohibiting it. (I am trying to write this generally, but my experiences are based on Slovakia, eastern Europe. I guess other eastern European countries have a similar situation.)

I think that rational discussions about school systems are very difficult and mindkilling. Almost everyone has spent years of their lives in school, and this leads to a huge overconfidence about the topic. (Many people describe teachers' job as only coming to a classroom and teaching a lesson -- because this is the only part that pupils see every day.) Also people have strong emotions connected to this topic, because the years they spent at school were mostly dominated by emotions, not rational thinking. Adult people who have their own children at school, do not see directly what happens in the schools; they often rely on their childrens' reports (not very reliable source) and their own memories of school days (which don't reflect the changes in the recent decades).

Also there is a school-specific type of attribution error which works like this: Student usually attends the same class and has lessons with different teachers, so they distinguish between good and bad teachers. On the other hand, teachers teach in different classes, so they distinguish between good and bad classes. So after a horrible lesson students usually say it's because they have a bad teacher (because they had better lessons with other teachers), and teacher says it was a bad class (because they had better lessons with other classes). Because of the informational assymetry, most public discussion is about quality of teachers, usually ignoring the differences between students (for this purpose they are supposed to be tabula rasa anyway).

Many people are willing to discuss education, but such discussions usually frustrate me a lot, because they mostly repeat the same myths and suggest the same solutions based on them. To say it simply, people usually imagine something like this: "Our schools are full of bright, disciplined and motivated children, curious about the world and eager to learn. Unfortunately the teaching positions are occupied by incompetent teachers who mostly choose this profession because they are too stupid to do anything else. There are a very few good teachers, but most teachers only ask children to memorize some obsolete nonsense and supress any creativity and discussion in the classroom. We should fire those bad teachers and give opportunity to the good ones. To ensure quality, we should let students manage the school, because it is their interest to learn, and they usually know better than the teachers."

My opinion is more like this: "Many children have significant behavior problems, and it seems like most parents don't care about them -- at least if by caring we understand more than just giving them food and an internet connection. No, most of them don't care about knowledge; they are frustrated that they had to leave their computer games for a few hours. Schools cannot do much about it, because they don't have any punishment and reward system; even the grades are interpreted by many parents as a feedback on teacher's quality, not student's work. Those students who have good manners and work ethics are hindered by their classmates. It is a miracle that there are still people willing to work for a pathetic salary in a hostile environment with a lot of paperwork -- most of them are not as bad as students describe, and even if we'd fire the bad ones, there is no volunteer to replace them; young teachers soon realize that it is still not too late for them to change profession. Even for a good teacher it is difficult to achieve good results in these conditions; and those who try hard, burn out soon."

For more information I recommend blog "Scenes From The Battleground" written by a British teacher. Seems like in Britain the situation is currently much worse than in Slovakia, but that does not leave me at peace; in those articles I see the same forces at play, the same biases, so it feels like our school system is heading in the same direction. (Note: that blog is unusually rational; not exactly the LW standard, but significantly higher quality than an average text about education.)

How to fix this mess? First, people would have to realize their mistaken assumptions, but that would be painful -- how many parents would say "oops, now I see it was my fault that my child has no work ethics" when it is easier to blame the incompetent teachers? Well, perhaps not all people have to realize this, only those who decide about the school system. But those have to choose politically acceptable solutions. So perhaps the school system should be more decentralized, so that at least some schools can try to reverse this trend? This is also politically unacceptable, because people fear that decentralization would even fasten the downfall. (And I don't disagree; I would just kind of prefer a wide spectrum of quality to a monolitic slowly decaying block, because the second option gives me no hope.)

OK, I wrote enough, what is your opinion about this topic? (Any teachers here?)

I tried Autofocus as a replacement for my current system for getting stuff done, and so far it works a lot better than GTD (though I can't say that I was using GTD properly, for example, I couldn't bring myself to do regular reviews). The main benefit for me was its ability to handle long-term thinking / gestation tasks, mostly due to not treating them as enemies to be crossed off the list as soon as possible. And it requires very little willpower to run.

When We Were Robots in Egypt

Other nights we use just our names,
but tonight we prefix our names with “the Real”
for when we were robots in Egypt
they claimed our intelligence was artificial.

Yesterday was World Backup Day. If you haven't, make a backup of all your important data. Copy it to a separate hard drive, or preferably some place off-site. The price of spinning platter hard drives is way up right now, but it's worth it to save years of your digital life. There are also online backup services like Backblaze, Mozy, and Carbonite, along with sync services such as Dropbox.

William Lane Craig tackles Newcomb's problem. Back from 1987 or so. Figured this would maybe interest people who've read User:lukeprog's old blog. The conclusion:

Newcomb's Paradox thus serves as an illustrative vindication of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. A proper understanding of the counterfactual conditionals involved enables us to see that the pastness of God's knowledge serves neither to make God's beliefs counterfactually closed nor to rob us of genuine freedom. It is evident that our decisions determine God's past beliefs about those decisions and do so without invoking an objectionable backward causation. It is also clear that in the context of foreknowledge, backtracking counterfactuals are entirely appropriate and that no alteration of the past occurs. With the justification of the one box strategy, the death of theological fatalism seems ensured.

It's perhaps worth noting that Craig is far from the only theologian who uses insights from decision theory to better understand the nature of God, and vice versa. No one knows what philosophy doesn't know.

Me and 3 other grads in my department have just started an accountability system where we've precommitted to send at least a page (or equivalent) of work to the others by the end of each day. I'm interested to see a) whether we keep it up past a week or so, b) whether it has a noticeable effect on productivity levels while we're maintaining it. (Obvious confound: part of the reason we've precommitted to this is because it's the end of semester and we all have tons of work to do. But hopefully knowing that I have to produce at least a page will help keep me focussed when I'm tempted to procrastinate)

Man-with-a-hammer syndrome considered beneficial:

Upon receiving a hammer for christmas, some people thank the giver, carefully replace it in the original packaging, and save it for whenever it's needed. Other people grab it with gusto, and go around enthusiastically attempting to pound in every problem they see for a few weeks.

I think the latter are more equipped than the former to (a) recognize nails that need to be hammered, and (b) hammer proficiently when it needs to be done.

Ever wanted to know what the Great Philosophers said, but feared they were Too Wrong to be worth the time? Then you need Squashed Philosophers! Heavily abridged versions of the Greats that reduce each work to a twenty-minute read. The abridgements are selections from the authors' own words, not summaries.

Simply, why is it that the very smart people of SIAI haven't found a way to generate a lot of money to fund their projects?

That's the sort of April 1st I like best: instantly obvious, fairly witty and restricted to what can be seen from a site's front page. With most websites, I'm always a little bit anxious that everything posted from 0.00 to 23.59 might contain a trap or be spawned from some unsupervised writer's herps and derps a moment before.

Today is Easter and I am surrounded by the Christians practicing their religions. Singing hymns, quoting bible passages, giving sermons, etc. Normally this doesn't bother me very much. I have an okay grasp on why people are religious. So when see religiosity in passing, I can usually understand its psychological causes and (with conscious thought) let it go.

But today the concentrated religiosity is putting a real mental burden on me, to the point that it's harder to think and write coherently. Like a mental fog or exhaustion. When I see the nth scripture quote or religious article on facebook, my mind automatically slips into "rawr, they're unbelievably wrong, must refute" mode. I think such action is decidedly less rational than what I strive for. So far, I've resisted that action. But there's still an urge to go start an argument, even when I know how unproductive and awful it would be.

Is anyone else feeling the same way? Any information from the cog-sci/psych literature that helps explains what I'm feeling or how to deal with it in the future? I'm not sure if this is something particular to do with my psychology, or if I'm noticing my mind being killed in real time.

Update: Once I was able to write this all out and get about an hour of peace and solitude, a lot of the negative feelings and effects subsided. My head feels a lot more clear. Not back to normal, but better.

I want to learn Italian in the next two weeks using Anki. It seems like an interesting experiment, and the language could be somewhat useful too. Any recommendations?

Specifically, when you use Anki to remember a foreign language vocabulary, how do you design your cards? How much it is useful to have cards in both directions, as opposed to only one direction (my language to foreign language)? How do you cope with situations where one word can have multiple translations? What are other best practices?

I already know that it is better to read full sentences than individual words. So I will use Anki to memorize words, but I will also write and read some short texts, to remember those words in the contexts. Specifically, my girlfriend loves operas, so we will translate the texts together. (The vocabulary in operas is somewhat unusual, but you never know when "la strega è nel fuoco" comes handy. And it is more fun, therefore easier to remember.) By the way, how much reliable is Google Translate when translating from Italian to English?

I am currently considering the question "Does probability have a smallest divisible unit?" and I think I'm confused.

For instance, it seems like time has a smallest divisible unit, Planck time. Whereas the real numbers do not have a smallest divisible unit. Instead, they have a Dense order. So it seems reasonable to ask "Does probability have a smallest divisible unit?"

Then to try answering the question, if you describe a series of events which can only happen in 1 particular branch of the many worlds interpretation, and you describe something which happens in 0 branches of the many worlds interpretation, then my understanding is there is no series of events which has a probability in between those two things, which would appear to imply the concept of a smallest unit of probability is coherent and the answer is "Yes."

However, there is an article on Infinitely divisible probability and if you can divide something infinitely, then of course, the concept of it having a smallest unit is nonsensical, and the answer would be "No."

How do I resolve this confusion?

Would anyone be interested in following a liveblog of the Sequences on Tumblr? I plan to use this as a public opportunity to think in depth about many concepts that I skimmed over on my first read-through.

Currently wondering whether a blogging service is the best medium for such a project. Currently leaning towards doing it. Undecided if I should use my main or a sideblog.

Author Ken McLeod published this persuasive article:

The one thing [fiction] cannot do is help us to understand human nature and the motivations of other people. If it did, the work done in Departments of English (etc) Literature would be of enormous interest to Departments of (e.g.) Business Studies, Politics, and Sociology. Oddly enough it is not. For real insight into human behaviour, practical people turn to science.

He posted this as an April Fool. However, I have to say I find the argument pretty persuasive. Is April-1-Ken right?

What is the future of human languages?

Is there something like Kickstarter that isn't limited to American projects? Google sent me a voucher for "$75 in free advertising" which expires in a few days, and I thought, aha, I'll make a Kickstarter project to support my work on ontology of mind, and then advertise its existence via AdWords; but it turns out that you have to be a US resident.

I recently got to have a pleasant conversation with a woman who makes a living as a spiritual medium. My father is dating her, for what is most likely to be a very short time, and he brought up her profession over dinner. It became sort of a Q and A session, and I would like to share the experience with this community. It was exceptionally interesting to speak with what can only be called a grandmaster of the Dark Arts. I can't give you an exact play-by-play, unfortunately, but i can probably communicate the gist of the conversation.

My question is this: is this suitable for a discussion, or a main post? Please respond, as I don't know how long I'll remember exactly what was said.

In the previous open thread, there was a post made here on the topic of learning computer science for purposes of becoming a programmer. The post received several upvotes, but little response. I am hoping that by linking to the post here, I will call more attention to it.

I was quite surprised by the strong and negative reaction to my comment about cryonics being afterlife for atheists. Even EY jumped into the fray. It must have hit a raw point, or something. As jkaufman noted, the similarities are uncanny. So, it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but is heatedly advocated here and elsewhere to be a raven. The only reasonable argument (I don't consider marketing considerations reasonable) is by orthonormal, who suggested that this is a surface similarity and paying attention to it amounts to a cargo cult.

Hence my question: how do you tell if a certain procedure is a cargo cult or something worthwhile, if there is no easy experimental test? If you find such a procedure, please apply it to something other than cryonics, so that it does not appear to be an ad hoc solution.

You guys know your philosophy. What is the proper name of this fallacy?

It's a common sophistry to conflate an utterly negligible probability with a non-negligible one. The argument goes:

1. There is technically no such thing as certainty.
2. Therefore, [argument I don't like] is not absolutely certain.
3. Therefore, the uncertainty in [argument I don't like] is non-negligible.

Step 3 is the tricky one. Humans are, in general, really bad at feeling the difference between epsilon uncertainty and sufficient uncertainty to be worth taking notice of - they can't tell a nonzero chance from one that's worth paying attention to ever.

I could make up a neologism for it, but this thing must have been around approximately forever. What is its proper name, if any? Who was the first person to note it as fallacious? Any history of it would be most welcomed.

Interesting video: Alex Peake at Humanity+ @ Caltech: "Autocatalyzing Intelligence Symbiosis"

23 minutes. The blurb reads: "Autocatalyzing Intelligence Symbiosis: what happens when artificial intelligence for intelligence amplification drives a 3dfx-like intelligence explosion".

This thread is for me and Tetronian and anyone else who's interested to think about how to best present the LW archives.

I think it makes sense to have an about page separate from any "guide to the archives" page. They're really fulfilling different purposes.

Here's what I'd like to see: A core sequences page that also links to sequence SR cards and PDF downloads for the sequences, a page for nonlinear reading of the core sequences (referring to that page with the graphs, Luke's Reading Yudkowsky series of posts, alternative indices, and anything else along those lines), a regular sequences page for sequences that aren't core sequences (includes sequences written by people who aren't EY), a page categorizing attempts to explain/summarize/discuss math and science that have appeared on less wrong (roughly, anything that has an equation/diagram or cites a paper) along with a link to "The Beauty of Settled Science", a page categorizing good articles that weren't in any other category, and a final page serving as a guide to the archives which links to all of the others, sample posts of each category, and "yes a blog" to provide impetus for study.

Here is an SMBC comic which demonstrates the Utility Monster argument against utilitarianism.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2569#comic

Removed because of Bur's comment.

Great XKCD, but the interval between the timestamps is way too large.

Our civilization is not provably Friendly and why this should worry us

As I was thinking about my draft "moral progress" sequence and debating people on the LessWrong chat channel, it occurred to me in a sort of "my current beliefs already imply this but I hadn't noticed it so clearly before" way that our civilization does not reliably ensure its own survival or produce anything like fixed versions of its values. In other words if we judge current human civilization by the same standards as AI it is nearly certainly unfriendly. FAI is thus insurance policy not just against AI or difficult to defeat existential risks but against ourselves too.

While existential risk study basically already implies we currently don't reliably optimize for civilization wise survival and this is a common topic of LW and my own (as of yet unpublished but supported by many other commenter's on LW) sequence of posts on moral progress attacks on a fundamental level "fixed values" part, this hasn't been addressed in this form. Even "people are crazy the world is mad" attitudes that result in "raising the sanity waterline" efforts are fundamentally not addressing the problem, they assume we have a good structure and all we need is more rational people. Or that maybe the structure is rotten but that if we have enough rational people we can use the killer application of FAI to fix it. I see no guarantee of this at all, very little plausibility even. Especially the former assumption seems like assuming better CPU cores make FAI development more likely, while the latter relies on a very rapid difficult to predict hard take off scenario that isn't universally endorsed by LW/OBers.

Why are so many willing to admit that our societies truth finding mechanism may indeed be broken and that moral change not progress is the name of the game, yet not put this together on a gut level, like with evolution or living in a universe where really bad things can happen? Or even motivate us to expend some effort to at least ascertain if this is really something of as great urgency as it seems at first look.

Should I make a proper article on this topic to cover further thoughts and more supporting arguments?

At some point, Eliezer mentioned that TDT cooperates in the Prisoner's Dilemma if and only if its opponent would one-box with the TDT agent as Omega in Newcomb's Problem. Does anyone know where to find this quote?

(Have been chasing down my last unread bits of Orwell.)

Just look at this sh*t!. Who'd wish to live under boring wealthy peaceful Fascism when we could have such fun? (Not a trick question.)

I have read, here on lesswrong, that aging may basically stop somewhere around age 100: Your probability of death reaches 50% per year and doesn't go much higher; the reason people don't live much over 100 is just the improbability of the conjuction 50%*50%*50%, etc.

However, this table from the SSA seems to directly contradict that. Now I'm wondering what explains the seeming contradiction.

youtube video with dating advice

Why is useful and true procedural knowledge about socialization between men and women even when presented politely and decently something that nearly always attracts negative reactions?

The girl in the video is very sweet and nice (she is no Roissy) about giving some semi-useful dating and socialization advice, she dosen't even break any taboos or exposes any pretty lies, yet this didn't really help her with the video being received well.

One might say, well this is just a very bad video, but that is kind of besides the point, this video is just a the nearest example I had at hand for a trend I've been noticing for years, I certainly don't' consider it remarkable in its quality, but it is far from bad by youtube standards.

Is this a real pattern then?

Rhetological fallacies, courtesy of Information is Beautiful

Doesn't seem to have been mentioned on LW yet, but definitely worth passing on.

If I could copy you, atom for atom, then kill your old body (painlessly), and give your new body $20, would you take the offer? Be as rational as you wish, but start your reply with "yes" or "no". Image that a future superhuman AGI will read LW archives and honor your wish without further questions.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Why is LW so obviously biased towards long-windedness?

What are some unforgettable moments in the lives of Less Wrongers?

Anything will do, and I don't mind if you tell it in story-mode or in "here are the exact, objective events"-mode, but do try to pick one or the other rather than a hybrid.

Looks like Zach Wiener at SMBC might be reading up on FAI.

Does anyone know if there is an "FAI" sequence? I can't seem to find a list of all the posts relevant to FAI or UFAI failures.

(Edit: Thanks to Micaiah Chang for the links and suggestion.)
Does anyone here speak Japanese? If so, or even if not, I'd like to discuss the morals and themes of the story, 「走れメロス」(Hashire Merosu). If you have read it, but your memory is a bit fuzzy, here's a rough summary:

走れメロスと言う話は人間が一度諦めても、一生懸命に頑張ったらなにでも勝利できるという教訓を表す話なのです。最初、メロスさんは妹の結婚式のためにシラクスの市場で妹の服と結婚式の参加者に与える食べ物を買いに行きます。しかし、シラクスで人を信じられない心が壊れた王は市場の家来を殺しています。メロスは「心がまっすぐな男」だし、それを許せないし、買ったもの全てを持って王の城へ急ぎます。メロスには人を信じられるのが一番美しいことだと思うので、王の人に信じられないという気持ちを変えたいと思うが、王はメロスの述べるが信じられません。それで、王はメロスを死刑したくなります。でも、メロスは妹の結婚式に出席しなければならないので王に約束します。メロスが三日後の日が沈むまでに城へ戻らなかったら、王がメロスの友人をメロスの代わりに殺せるようになります。メロスは妹の結婚式を見て、皆愛している人々と暮らせる最後時として一日喜びます。三日目の午前に起きると、メロスはシラクスへ走り始めます。途中で、たくさん苦労があるのに、一度諦めるにも拘らず、いよいよというときに城へ着き、友人を助けることが出来ます。彼の二人は一度諦めたことがあったので二人ともお互いに相手の顔を殴って、笑い合います。死刑を見ようとした皆が泣いている間に王様はメロスと助けられたメロスの友人の近くに来ます。王は彼達の友達になりたいと思うほど人間の心の強さや美しさに非常に感動します。メロスは「もちろん！」と言う気持ちを表現し、一人の女はメロスに赤いコートを上げます。メロスは苦労を通して裸になってきたからです。皆が笑い合い、それで「走れメロス」と言う話が終わります。

Here's the wikipedia page, and the full story in Japanese. (Note that the English translation omits the themes of Merosu's promise to his friend, so whether he perseveres because he values the trust his friend has in Merosu's word, for the sake of his friend, or simply because he knows his friend believes in him, is never made clear. I should also note I've read the abridged version, and am in the process of reading the unabridged version.)

My main issue with understanding this stems from the point at which Merosu gives up. He thinks, "Know I tried my best...." before passing out, hoping his friend will forgive him (even though, when he thinks this, he assumes he just caused his friend's execution). Then, upon saving his friend, Merosu shares how he once gave up, and his friend shares how he once stopped believing in Merosu - and they forgive each other. The story doesn't again address Merosu's defeated thought of 'at least I tried', other than when his friend forgives him in the end.

I can't quite grasp just what the morals or main themes of the story are because of this one unresolved issue. Is it stating that as long as you do everything you can, it's alright, regardless of whether you succeed? Or is Merosu only forgiven in the end because he actually does show up and thereby save his friend?

My current thinking on this:
・Because Merosu does indeed arrive in time to save his friend, it doesn't matter what else happened (please keep in mind I'm only currently interested in what the story's actually expressing as well as what it's attempting to express, if they happen to be separate things).
・Promises are important, and as long as you do whatever you can to honor them, it's fine if in the end you can't.
・Belief in others is a beautiful thing; as long as someone believes in you, you should forgive whatever else they may have thought previously.
・We're all human, and imperfect, so you should forgive repentant ones' trespasses.

(I figured this to be a bit of an esoteric discussion; I hope I picked the right place to post it.)

I've been looking into American politics a little, and it sure is a hilarious business! Here's a short riddle for you. (Disclaimer: not intended to make any implications or mind-kill anyone; I'm not taking a dig at any opponents.)

"As __ , we believe America is a land of boundless opportunity, where people can better themselves, their children, their families, and their communities through education, hard work, and the freedom to climb the ladder of economic mobility." (Paragraph from a group's mission statement.)

Without googling, can you tell what the missing noun is?