Open thread, August 12-18, 2013

(Trigger warnings: mention of rape, harassment, and hostile criticism of Less Wrong.)

A lesson on politics as mindkiller —

There's a thread on Greta Christina's FTB blog about standards of evidence in discussions of rape and harassment. One of her arguments:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. But claims of sexual harassment, abuse, assault, and rape are not extraordinary. They are depressingly ordinary. So the level of evidence we should need to believe a claim about sexual harassment, abuse, assault, or rape is substantially lower than the level of evidence we should need to believe a claim about, say, Bigfoot.

This is straight Bayes — since the prior for rape is higher than the prior for Bigfoot, it requires less evidence to raise our credence above 0.5 in any given case of a claimed occurrence. In the comments, one person points out the connection to Bayes, in part remarking:

“Bayesian updating” is a good method for using evidence rationally to change your mind. If someone requires extraordinary evidence to believe a depressingly common event, they are not being rational.

In response, another commenter, apparently triggered by the mention of Bayes, goes on a tirade about Michael Anissimov and Less Wrong being misogynistic. This commenter selectively quotes Anissimov regarding IQ, Larry Summers, and "political correctness" — a quote that (at least, out of context) sounds pretty damning, as silly as it would be to infer from Anissimov to Less Wrong. When I read this comment, I winced; my reaction could be stated something like this: "Aw, jeez. LW does not need a squabble with the FTB folks and the progressive-feminist end of the skeptic movement. Hardly anyone can speak both groups' languages. If a conflict happened, both groups would be worsened by the polarization."

That is, I was (for just a moment) ① willing to take the tirade-poster as representative of "the FTB folks" and ② predicting the tirade-poster to be a catalyst of an intertribal conflict between two groups I'd prefer to see reconciled.

But I kept looking ... and it turned out that the tirade-poster was a troll, or at least a crank, on FTB and was readily recognized as such by the folks there. In other words, my initial expectation of a brewing political clash was flat wrong — and I had (albeit momentarily) taken the words of a deviant, undesired member of a group as indicative of that group!

Given all the concerns about replication in psychology, it's good to see that at least the most important studies get replicated: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. ;)

I've decided to live less on the internet (a.k.a. the world's most popular superstimulus) and more in real life. I pledge to give $75 to MIRI if I make any more posts on this account or on my reddit account before the date of October 13 (two months from now).

On a related note, I was thinking about how to solve the problem of the constant temptation to waste time on the internet. For most superstimuli, the correct action is to cut yourself off completely, but that's not really an option at all here. Even disregarding the fact that it would be devastatingly impractical in today's world, the internet is an instant connection to all the information in the world, making it incredibly useful. Ideally one would use the internet purely instrumentally - you would have an idea of what you want to do, open up the browser, do it, then close the browser.

To that end, I have an idea for a Chrome extension. You would open up the browser, and a pop-up would appear prompting you to type in your reason for using the internet today. Then, your reason would be written in big black letters at the top of the page while you're browsing, and only go away when you close Chrome. This would force you to remain focused on whatever you were doing, and when you notice that you've fulfilled that purpose and are now just checking your email for no reason, that would be your clue to close the browser and do something else.

I don't think anything like this exists yet. I might try to make it myself - I don't have that much coding experience, but it seems like it could be relatively easy.

Should we take rhodiola rosea which "extends the lifespans of fruit flies 24% and delays age-related loss in physical performance"?

There was a post on Slashdot today arguing that "Aging is a disease and we should try to defeat it or at least slow it down".

The comments are full of deathism: many people apparently sincerely coming out in favour of not just death (limited lifespan) but aging and deterioration.

Everyone who doesn't feel in their gut that many (most?) normal people truly believe aging and death are good, and will really try to stop you from curing it if they can, should go and read through all the comments there. It's good rationality training if (like me) you haven't ever discussed this in person with your friends (or if they all happened to agree). It's similar to how someone brought up by and among atheists (again, me) may not understand religion emotionally without some interaction with it.

Someone marked the appeal to worse problems article on Wikipedia for prospective deletion, for lack of sourcing - it appears to mostly have been written from the TVTropes page page. I've given it its proper name and added "whataboutery" as another name for it - but it needs more, and preferably from a suitably high-quality source.

A fact about industrial organization that recently surprised me:

Antimonopoly rules prevent competitors from coordinating. One exemption in the US is political lobbying: executives can meet at their political action committee. Joint projects in some industries are organized as for-profit companies owned by (nonprofit) political action committees.

My girlfriend taught me how to dive this past weekend. I'm 26. I had fully expected to go my entire life without learning how to dive, I guess because I unconsciously thought it was "too late" to learn, somehow. Now I'm wondering what other skills I never learned at the typical age and could just as easily learn now.

(if you're looking for object-level takeaways, just start out with kneeling dives - they're way easier and far less intimidating - then gradually try standing up more and more)

Two roads diverged in a woods, and I
Stepped on the one less traveled by
Yet stopped, and pulled back with a cry
For all those other passers-by
Who had this road declined to try
Might have a cause I knew not why
What dire truths might that imply?
I feared that road might make me die.
And so with caution to comply
I wrung my hands and paced nearby
My questions finding no reply
Until a traveller passed nigh
With stronger step and focused eye
I bid the untouched road goodbye
And followed fast my new ally.
The difference made I'll never know
'Till down that other path you go.

I couldn't find a place to mention this sort of thing at the wiki, so I'm mentioning it here.

The search box should be near the top of the page.

It's one of the most valuable things on a lot of websites, especially wikis, and I don't want to have to look for it.

What are the relative merits of using one's real name vs. a pseudonym here?

When I first started reading LessWrong, I was working in an industry obsessed with maintaining very mainstream appearances, so I chose to go with a pseudonym. I have since changed industries and have no intention of going back, so my original reason for using a pseudonym is probably irrelevant now.

I continue running into obstacles (largely-but-not-exclusively of an accessibility nature) when it comes to the major crowdfunding websites. It seems not to be just me; the major platforms (Kickstarter/Indiegogo) could stand to be much more screen reader-friendly, and the need for images (and strong urging to use videos) is an obstacle to any blind person seeking funding who doesn't have easy access to sighted allies/minions.

My present thoughts are that I'd rather outsource setting up crowdfunding campaigns to someone for whom these would not be serious obstacles (said manager would probably be compensated with a cut of the funds).

What I don't know is:

• how to find/recruit someone willing to do this,
• how likely it is they'd be satisfied with what I'd consider a reasonable cut of the funds from any given campaign, and
• what sorts of legal arrangements would need to be made to protect against said manager just walking away with everything.

Can anyone hereabouts answer one or all of the above? (I am also curious as to whether or not the demand among blind developers/startups/etc mightn't be high enough that "crowdfunding manager for the blind" might not be a profitable side-job for someone with halfway decent marketing skill, but that's not an easy thing to estimate.)

Here's an interesting article that argues for using (GPL-protected) open source strategies to develop strong AI, and lays out reasons why AI design and opsec should be pursued more at the modular implementation level (where mistakes can be corrected based on empirical feedback) rather than attempted at the algorithmic level. I would be curious to see MIRI's response.

I searched and it doesn't look like anyone has discussed this criticism of LW yet. It's rather condescending but might still be of interest to some: http://plover.net/~bonds/cultofbayes.html

Does anyone have any opinions on this paper? [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.4913.pdf]

It is a proof of Bell's Inequality using counterfactual language. The idea is to explore links between counterfactual causal reasoning and quantum mechanics. Since these are both central topics on Less Wrong, I'm guessing there are people on this website who might be interested.

I don't have any background in Quantum Mechanics, so I cannot evaluate the paper myself, but I know two of the authors and have very high regard for their intelligence.

Does anybody think that there might be another common metaethical theory to go along w/ deontology, consequentialism, and virtue? I think it's only rarely codified, usu. used implicitly or as a folk theory, in which morality consists of bettering ones own faction and defeating opposing factions, and as far as I can see it's most common in radical politics of all stripes. Is this distinguishable from very myopic consequentialism or mere selfishness?

I often write things out to make them clear in my own mind. This works particularly well for detailed planning. Just as some people "don't know what they think until they hear themselves say it", I don't know what I think until I write it down. (Fast typing is an invaluable skill.)

Sometimes I use the same approach to work out what I think, know or believe about a subject. I write a sort of evolving essay laying out what I think or know.

And now I wonder: how much of that is true for other people? For instance, when Eliezer set out to write the Sequences, did he already know or believe everything that is written in them? Or did he gradually discover what is in them as he wrote them? If he hadn't known some of what is written, could he have discovered it via the process of trying to write? Or is intellectual reflection and working-out premises into conclusions experienced differently by other people?

Idle curiosity / possibility of post being deleted:

At one point in LessWrong's past (some time in the last year, I think), I seem to recall replying to a post regarding matters of a basilisk nature. I believe that the post I replied to was along these lines:

Given that the information has been leaked, what is the point of continuing to post discussions of this matter?

I believe my response was long the lines of:

I hate to use silly reflective humor, but given that the information has been leaked, what is the point of censoring discussions of this matter?

At this time, I am unable to find these posts. Am I being paranoid, or was perhaps this thread deleted?

Problem:

• Attractive commentary is insightful and pithy, but forums do not accumulate pith. Forums bloat with redundant observations, misread remarks, and misunderstanding replies unless the community aggressively cull those comments.
• Having your comment dismissed is unwelcoming and hurtful. Even if we know that downvotes shouldn't be hurtful, they are.

Inspiration:

This thread.

Proposal:

Dismiss comment button

Bob writes a comment that doesn't carry its weight. Alice, a LW reader, can choose to up-vote, down-vote, or Dismiss Bob's comment. Dismiss advises the community that a commentent may not be worth reading, but does not notify the comment's author (Bob).

• Anyone who Dismissed Bob's comment would see it as folded (or even removed)
• Bob would not see his commment as folded.
• Anyone else who didn't dismiss Bob's comment might or might not see it folded, depending on their ("Don't show me comments with a score less than x") preferences.:
  • For the purposes of Karma folding, Alice's dissmiss would count as if it were -1 karma. If Bob's comment had a karma score of 1 and was Dismissed once, users who fold comments with scores of 0 would see Bob's comment as folded.
  • If Bob's comment were for Alice's article, Alice's Dismiss would count as if it were -3 karma for the purposes of comment folding. This allows article authors quickly nip off-topic commentary.
  • If Bob dissmissed his own comment, it would also count as if it were -3 karma.
• The total number of times Bob's comment was Dismissed would be invisible to all users. If he really wanted to, Bob could set up a puppet account, vary the ("Don't show me comments with a score less than x") field until his comment was folded, and from that infer the number of dismisses on that comment. If Bob does that, I don't particularly care if his feelings are hurt.

Researchers have found that people experiencing Nietzschean angst tend to cling to austere ethical codes, in the hopes of reorienting themselves.

That quote is from this Slate article - the article is mostly about social stigma surrounding mental illness.

The quote is plausible, in an untrustworthy common-sense kind of way. It also seems to align with my internal perspective of my moral life. Does anyone know if it is actually true? What research is out there?

EDIT: In case it isn't clear, I'm asking if anyone knows anything about the (uncited) research mentioned in the quote. My intuition leans towards the quote being right. But I don't know if I should trust that intuition, since intuitions are often unreliable and I have many reasons to distrust my intuitions specifically. So I'm looking for some amount of external verification.

I'm a CFAR alumnus looking to learn how to code for the very first time. When I met Luke Muehlhauser, he said that as far as skills go, coding is very good for learning quickly whether one is good at it or not. He said that Less Wrong has some resources for learning and assessing my own natural talent or skill for coding, and he told me to come here to find it.

So, where or what is this resource which will assess my own coding skills with tight feedback loops? Please and thanks.

I've set up a prediction tracking system for personal use. I'm assigning confidence levels to each prediction so I can check for areas of under- or over-confidence.

My question: If I predicted X, and my confidence in X changes, will it distort the assessment of my overall calibration curve if I make a new prediction about X at the new confidence level, keep the old prediction, and score both predictions later? Is that the "right" way to do this?

More generally, if my confidence in X fluctuates over time, does it matter at all what criterion I use for deciding when and how many predictions to make about X, if my purpose is to see if my confidence levels are well calibrated? (Assuming I've predetermined which X's I want to eventually make predictions about)

My thinking is that a confidence level properly considers it's own future volatility, and so it shouldn't matter when I "sample" by making a prediction. But if I imagine a rule like: "Whenever your confidence level about X is greater than 90%, make two identical predictions instead of one", it feels like I'm making some mistake.

This has probably been mentioned before, but I didn't feel like searching the entire comment archive of Less Wrong to find discussion on it: Can functionality be programmed into the website to sort the comments from posts from Overcoming Bias days by "Best" or at least "Top" ("New" would be nice as well!!)? Those posts are still open for commenting, and sometimes I find comments from years later more insightful. Plus, I'm sick and tired of scrolling through arguments with trolls.

And, given that this probably has been discussed before - why hasn't it been done yet?

Just a few questions for some of you:

• Running simulations with sentient beings is generally accepted as bad here at LW; yes or no?

• If you assign a high probability of reality being simulated, does it follow that most people with our experiences are simulated sentient beings?

I don't have an opinion yet, but I find the combination of answering yes to both questions, extremely unsettling. It's like the whole universe conspires against your values. Surprisingly, each idea encountered by itself doesn't seem to too bad. It's when simultaneously being against simulation of sentience beings and believing that most sentient beings are probably simulated, that really makes it disturbing.

I've decided to start a blog, and I kind of like the name "Tin Vulcan", but I suspect that would be bad PR. Thoughts? (I don't intend it to be themed, but I would expect most of the posts to be LW-relevant.)

(Name origins: Fbzr pbzovangvba bs "orggre guna n fgenj ihypna" naq gur Gva Jbbqzna.)

I've heard the idea of adaptive screen brightness mentioned here a few times. I know fluxgui in Linux that does it. and seems that windows 7 and 8 come equipped. My windows is XP in one of my computers, how do I get it to lose brightness automatically during late hours?

Socks: Traditionally I've worn holeproof explorers. Last time I went shopping for new socks, I wanted to try something new but was overwhelmed by choice and ended up picking some that turned out to be rather bad. My holeproofs and the newer ones are both coming to the end of their lives, and I'll need to replace them all soon. Where should I go to learn about what types of sock would be best?

A quick google for best socks or optimal socks leads me to lots of shops, and pages for sports socks, and pages for sock fashion, but nothing about picking out a comfortable, not-smelly sock that doesn't develop holes quickly or lose fit. I suppose, failing all else, I could just pick my way through amazon reviews, but I thought someone here might be able to give me some pointers in the right direction?

I would appreciate some advice. I've been trying to decide what degree to get. I've already taken a bunch of general classes and now I need to decide what to focus on. There are many fields that I think would enjoy working in, such as biotechnology, neuroscience, computer science, molecular manufacturing, alternative energy, etc. Since I'm not sure what I want to go into I was thinking of getting degree with a wide range of applications, such as physics, or math. I plan on improving my programming skills in my spare time, which should widen my prospects.

One goal I have is to donate to various organizations. One area of study I was considering was gerontology, working at SENS, but I learned that they already have a large pool of researchers, and their main bottleneck is funding. Other areas I want to donate to are MIRI and GiveWell.

do any programmers or web developers have an opinion about getting training on team tree house? has anyone else done this?

Does anyone have a working definition of "forgiveness"? Given that definition, do you find it to be a useful thing to do?

There was a recent post or comment about making scientific journal articles more interesting by imagining the descriptions (of chemical interactions?) as being GIGANTIC SPECIAL EFFECTS. Anyone remember it well enough to give a link?

Does anyone else has problems with the appearance of Lesswrong? My account is somehow at the bottom of the site and the text of some posts transgresses the white background. I noticed the problem about 2 days ago. I didn't change my browser (Safari) or something else. Here are 2 screenshots:

http://i.imgur.com/OO5UHPX.png http://i.imgur.com/0Il8TeJ.png

Rhodiola is apparently the bomb, but I've read somewhere it suffers from poor quality supplements. Here in CEE in pharmacies the brand name they sell is called Vitango. Any experiences? http://www.vitango-stress.com/

In programming, you can "call" an argumentless function and get a value. But in mathematics, you can't. WTF?

I had an idea for Wei Dai's "What is Probability, Anyway?," but after actually typing up I became rather unsure that I was actually saying anything new. Is this something that hasn't been brought up before, or did I just write up a "durr"? (If it's not, I'll probably expand it into a full Discussion post later.)

The fundamental idea is, imagining a multiverse of parallel universes, define all identical conscious entities as a single cross-universal entity, and define probability of an observation E as (number of successors to the entity which observed E) / (total number of successors to the entity). Observations constrain the entity to particular universes, as do decisions, but in different ways; so that we occasionally find ourselves on either side of an observation, but never see ourselves move counter to a decision (except in the sense that what we decide as a brain is not always what we consciously decide.)

Fair warning: I attempted to formalize the concept, but as a undergrad non-math major, the result may look less than impressive to trained eyes. My apologies if this is the case.

The idea is as follows:

Define a conscious observer as some algorithm P(0). P(0) computes on available data and returns a new observer P(1) to act on new available data. Note that it is possible to generate a set of all possible outputs P(n); on human timescales and under the limitation of a human lifetime, it is plausible that such a set would match with the intuitive concept of a "character" who undergoes development.

Assume many-worlds. There are now a very large number of identical algorithms P(n) scattered across the many worlds. Since P(n)=P(n), no local experiment can distinguish between algorithms; therefore scratch the concept of them being separate entirely, and consider them all to be a single conscious entity P.

P does not know which universe it is in (by definition) to start. It can change this by making an observation: it updates itself on sensory data. Regardless of which result is recorded, P(n+1) has lesser measure than P(n): P(n+1) occupies precisely half of the universes P does. P(n+1) has learned more about the universe it is in, so ist space of possible universes has diminished.

An example: consider the example of observing a fair coin - for example, observing the spin of an electron. All of P(n) runs the same algorithm: read the single bit corresponding to the spin, add bit to memory with a suitable wrapper: "Result of experiment: 0/1". This is the new P(n+1), which regardless of result is a new entity. Let us designate successors to P(n) which observed a positive spin Q+, and those which observed a negative spin Q-. Since Q+ and Q- are not equal - they differ in one bit - they are not the same entity, even though they are both successors to (and are part of the same "character" as) P(n). Thus each of Q+/- observe only one version of the experiment.

As a lead-in to decision-making: consider what would happen if P(n) had precommitted to producing Q+, and never produced a Q-. Then the universe "Character P observes a negative spin" is inconsistent, and does not exist (barring, say, a random cosmic ray changing the algorithm.) Such a mind would never observe a spin-down event. This is distinct from quantum immortality/suicide - whereas a quantum suicide leaves behind a "world without you," precommitting in this way means that a given world is inconsistent and never existed in the first place. Barring improbability, no successor of P(n) observes a spin-down event.

In this sense, we can define a decision as a "false observation." P(n) decides to cause event E by choosing to only output successor functions in which event E is observed. (Note that this wording is excessively confusing; a brain which outputs a "move arm" signal is highly unlikely to be in a state where the arm does not move, and so can be said to have "decided" to move the arm.) A decision, then, as expected, also narrows the field of possible universes - but, at least hypothetically, in a purposeful manner.

Little Wayne