Open thread, Jan. 18 - Jan. 24, 2016

Another post about parenting with a lesswrong touch:

In other Peoples Shoes

Part of Philosophy with Children Sequence

"Assume you promised your aunt to play with you nieces while she goes shopping and your friend calls and invites you to something you'd really like to do. What do you do?"

This was the first question I asked my two oldest sons this evening as part of the bed time ritual. I had read about Constructive Development Theory and wondered if and how well they could place themselves in other persons shoes and what played a role in their decision. How they'd deal with it. A good occasion to have some philosophical talk. This is the (shortened) dialog that ensued:

The immediate answer by A: "I will watch after the girls."

Me: "Why?"

A: "Because I promised it."

B: "Does A also promise it and get a call?"

Me: "This is about your nieces and your friend, not about your brother."

B: "But I need this for my answer."

Me: "I don't see why, but OK, assume that he is not involved."

B: "Because I would ask him whether he might play with the girls in exchange for a favor."

Me: "OK, but please assume that he is away."

B: "Then I could ask my aunt whether somebody else can watch for the girls or whether I could do it together with my friend."

Me: "Please assume that she doesn't find somebody and that she doesn't want somebody she doesn't know in her house."

B: "Then I'd do it."

Me: "Why?"

B: "Because I promised it. I'd tell my friend that we can do it another time."

We had another scenario: "Imagine that you and a fellow pupil C are guests at a friend and having a meal. You know that C is from a family that is very strict about not eating a kind of food that you like very much. Would you advise C to eat it or not?"

A (quickly): "I'd advise to not eat it."

Me: "Why?"

A: "I like rules."

B (after some consideration): "I'd advise to follow their heart."

Me: "And if you were C?"

B: "I'd at least try a bit."

(this was followed with a discussion about possible long-term consequences)

I was still not clear whether this implied whether he followed only his preferences considered this in the context of the rules in the family. So I proposed a setting where he had to imagine being in another country with different laws. We settled on a rule he accepts here (indemnification) but that was much harsher in the other country. He asked whether he had the same feelings as here which after some clarification I confirmed. He argued that he wouldn't like the rule in the other country because it set questionable incentives: "If the punishment is that strong that tells people that it is OK to punish equally strong normally."

Reading the preface to Science and Sanity by Korzybski:

From its very inception, the discipline of general semantics has been such as to attract persons possessing high intellectual integrity, independence from orthodox commitments, and agnostic, disinterested and critical inclinations. (...) For them, authority reposes not in any omniscient or omnipresent messiah, but solely in the dependability of the predictive content of propositions made with reference to the non-verbal happenings in this universe. They apply this basic rubric as readily to korzybskian doctrine as to all other abstract formulations and theories and, like good scientists, they are prepared to cast them off precisely as soon as eventualities reveal them to be incompetent, i.e., lacking in reliable predictive content. This circumstance in itself should abrogate once and for all the feckless charges sometimes made by ill-informed critics that general semantics is but one more of a long succession of cults, having its divine master, its disciples, a bible, its own mumbo-jumbo and ceremonial rites. (...) Far from being inclined to repel changes that appear to menace the make-up of general semantics, they actively anticipate them and are prepared to foster those that seem to promise better predictions, better survival and better adaptation to the vicissitudes of this earthly habitat.

One cannot help but be aware, in 1958, that there is far less suspicion and misgiving among intellectuals concerning general semantics and general semanticists than prevailed ten and twenty years ago. Indeed, a certain receptivity is noticeable. The term 'semantics' itself is now frequently heard on the radio, TV and the public speaking platform and it appears almost as frequently in the public print. It has even found a recent 'spot' in a Hollywood movie and it gives some promise of becoming an integral part of our household jargon. This in no sense means that all such users of the term have familiarized themselves with the restricted meaning of the term 'semantics,' much less that they have internalized the evaluative implications and guiding principles of action subsumed under general semantics. A comparable circumstance obtains, of course, in the layman's use of other terms, such as 'electronics.'

(...) The years since the close of World War II have similarly witnessed the access of general semantics not only to academic curricula of the primary, secondary and collegiate levels of the North and South American continents, parts of Western Europe, Britain, Australia and Japan, but to the busy realms of commerce, industry and transportation: of military organization and civil administration; of law, engineering, sociology, economics and religion. These constitute no negligible extensions of general semantics into the world of 'practical' affairs. Large business enterprises, looking toward the improvement of intra-and extramural relations, more satisfying resolutions of the complicated problems that arise between labor and management, and the enhancement of service to their immediate constituents and fellow men in general have found it rewarding, in many instances, to reorganize their entire structure so as to assure the incorporation of general semantic formulations. Several organizations now in existence make it their sale business to advise and provide help in the implementation of such changes. The core of their prescriptions consists in the appropriate application of general semantics. It is becoming a routine for the high and intermediate level executives of certain industries, advertising agencies, banking establishments and the like to retreat for several days at a time while they receive intensive instruction and participate in seminar-workshops designed to indoctrinate them with the principles of general semantics. Comparable courses of instruction have been provided within recent years for the officers of the U.S. Air Academy, the traffic officers of the Chicago Police Department and the sales forces of several large pharmaceutical and biochemical houses. These innovations in business procedure entail, of course, enormous outlays of time, energy and money. They must in time pay perceptible dividends or suffer abandonment. That they are steadily on the increase appears to offer eloquent testimony of their effectiveness.

(...) Membership in the two major organizations concerned with the development, teaching and utilization of general semantics, namely, the Institute of General Semantics located at Lakeville, Connecticut and the International Society for General Semantics, with its central office at Chicago, has slowly but steadily increased over the years and, gratifyingly, has generally avoided the 'lunatic fringe' that appears ever ready to attach itself to convenient nuclei. (...) numerous sectional conferences have been held in various cities each year and the number of courses sought and offered in general semantics is definitely on the increase.

All in all, then, a healthy state of affairs appears to prevail in respect of general semantics. The impact of Korzybski's work on Western culture is now unmistakable and there is every reason to be optimistic that his precepts will be read by ever-widening circles of serious students and that the latter, in their turn, must deeply influence generations of students yet to come. It remains to be seen what effects the regular implementation of these precepts will bring to mankind. Many of us are convinced that they will prove highly salutary.

Impressive! It's like reading about CFAR from a parallel universe. I wonder what happened in that parallel universe fifty years after this text was published. Can we use it as an outside view for the LW rationality movement fifty years after they achieve the successes listed here?

Please share something you consider a positive characteristic of another LessWronger that you haven’t shared elsewhere :)

Is here any interest in posts about parenting with a lesswrong touch?

Example:

Mental Images Part of Philosophy with Children

This evening my oldest asked me to test his imagination. Apparently he had played around with it and wanted some outside input to learn more about what he could do. We had talked about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_image before and I knew that he could picture moving scenes composed of known images. So I suggested

• a five with green white stripes - diagonally. That took some time - apparently the green was difficult for some reason, he had to converge there from black via dark-green
• three mice
• three mice, one yellow, one red, and one green
• the three colored mice running behind each other in circles (all no problem)
• he himself
• he himself in a mirror looking from behind (no problem)
• two almost parallel mirrors with him in between (he claimed to see his image infinitely repeated; I think he just recalled such an experiment we did another time).
• a street corner with him on the one side and a bike leaning an the other wall with the handlebar facing the corner and with a bicycle bell on the left side such that he cannot see the bike.
• dito with him looking into a mirror held before him so he can see the bike behind the corner.

The latter took quite some time, partly because he had to assign colors and such so that he could fully picture this and then the image in the mirror. I checked by asking where the handlebar is and the bell. I had significant difficulties to imagine this and correctly place the bell. I noticed that it is easier to just see the bell once the image in the mirror has gained enough detail (the walls before and behind me, the corner, the bike leaning on the corner, the handlebar).

I also asked for a square circle which got the immediate reply that it is logically impossible.

If you have difficulties doing these (are judge them trivial): This is one area where human experience varies a lot. So this is not intended to provide a reference point in ability but an approach to teach human difference, reflection and yes also practice imagination - a useful tool if you have it. If not you might be interested in what universal human experiences are you missing without realizing it.

I'm currently writing these daily and posting them on the LW slack and the less-wrong-parents group.

Oh, dear. A paper in PNAS says that the usual psychological experiments which show that people have a tendency to cooperate at the cost of not maximizing their own welfare are flawed. People are not cooperative, people are stupid and cooperate just because they can't figure out how the game works X-D

Abstract:

Economic experiments are often used to study if humans altruistically value the welfare of others. A canonical result from public-good games is that humans vary in how they value the welfare of others, dividing into fair-minded conditional cooperators, who match the cooperation of others, and selfish noncooperators. However, an alternative explanation for the data are that individuals vary in their understanding of how to maximize income, with misunderstanding leading to the appearance of cooperation. We show that (i) individuals divide into the same behavioral types when playing with computers, whom they cannot be concerned with the welfare of; (ii) behavior across games with computers and humans is correlated and can be explained by variation in understanding of how to maximize income; (iii) misunderstanding correlates with higher levels of cooperation; and (iv) standard control questions do not guarantee understanding. These results cast doubt on certain experimental methods and demonstrate that a common assumption in behavioral economics experiments, that choices reveal motivations, will not necessarily hold.

Do we have a way to measure how happy farm animals happen to be? If we don't than developing a metric might produce huge gains in animal welfare, because it allows us to optimize for it better.

I was on vacation, confident that Clarity would have opened the new open threads. Since it wasn't the case, I'm resuming from today the 'duty' of creation of such threads. Happy LessWronging.

Interested if anyone has thoughts/research on this question:

Are chickens affected by the hedonic treadmill? If so, are they equally, more, or less susceptible to it? What about pigs?

What would be the optimal wording for a tattoo asking doctors to harvest one's organs for transplants if one happens to die?

Evidence for a distant giant planet in the Solar System

Recent analyses have shown that distant orbits within the scattered disk population of the Kuiper Belt exhibit an unexpected clustering in their respective arguments of perihelion. While several hypotheses have been put forward to explain this alignment, to date, a theoretical model that can successfully account for the observations remains elusive. In this work we show that the orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) cluster not only in argument of perihelion, but also in physical space. We demonstrate that the perihelion positions and orbital planes of the objects are tightly confined and that such a clustering has only a probability of 0.007% to be due to chance, thus requiring a dynamical origin. We find that the observed orbital alignment can be maintained by a distant eccentric planet with mass gsim10 m⊕ whose orbit lies in approximately the same plane as those of the distant KBOs, but whose perihelion is 180° away from the perihelia of the minor bodies. In addition to accounting for the observed orbital alignment, the existence of such a planet naturally explains the presence of high-perihelion Sedna-like objects, as well as the known collection of high semimajor axis objects with inclinations between 60° and 150° whose origin was previously unclear. Continued analysis of both distant and highly inclined outer solar system objects provides the opportunity for testing our hypothesis as well as further constraining the orbital elements and mass of the distant planet.

There was a link (I think it was from Wedrifed) that allowed you to sort a particular user's posts/comments by karma (rather than by time). Does anybody know where that link is?

So, I only recently decided to start taking Vitamin D after reading Gwern's discussion of it here, and I've been wondering if there are other easy wins for extending one's healthspan/life expectancy/lifespan cheaply that we're collectively missing.

On one level, it seems like having individual LWers go out, read a number of research papers, and then do a cost-benefit analysis on an intervention has produced good research before, but this approach feels a bit unorganized to me.

So, part of me wonders if it might be a good idea to just pay someone (say, Gwern, or someone who used to work for MetaMed--not that I asked Gwern if he'd be up for the task before writing this) to go and see if there are any obvious interventions that we're not aware of. The writer could try to write a more complete version of Lifestyle Interventions to Increase Longevity, or they could just look for new interventions that we LWers have collectively overlooked, and publish a short summary of their findings, if any.

I'm mainly asking about this now to see if people think this is a good idea, but I hope that, in a year or so, I'd actually be able to put up a chunk of money for something like this to be done, if I still thought it was a good idea.

Star Slate Codex readers may remember the prime number factorisation experimental protocol (http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/). It’s one of many dangerous but high impact rationality experiments that I have had (not longer) an interest in testing. Before I got serious about rationality I was getting increasingly mentally ill. I was considered to be in the prodrome of schizophrenia and even experienced (though I was skeptical about the veracity of my memory, till this recent experience which helped remind me of the subjective experience) ‘’first episode of psychosis’’. I believe that immersion in the rationality community helped me eventually get discharged from early-psychosis intervention, get taken off anti-psychotics and to no longer be considered psychotic in any way shape of form. This is unpresedented, since it is generally believe the progress of schizophrenia is such that there is no such remission. So I reckon it’s my social duty to explore this and see if my story can be of value to others: raising the sanity waterline if you will.

This post will be the first in a multi-post series about the most recent such journey and why I have given it up. I hope it serves as a warning and caution to those with the gall to do similar things, and some insight into the limits of rationality to more mainstream rationalists. To anyone looking for something profound in this post without using their own powers to draw more from it than I saw straight up, I recommend you skip this one and keep an eye out for the follow-up posts since this is basically background information.

I had noticed a man wearing a plain pastel green shirt. No that’s too generous: plain pastel green tabard, a big nose and haphazardly braided hair aboard the trip. I assumed he was a kind of hippy tourist that was trying to hard and had gone out of his way to make his own clothing. I assume a gentle nature. As I left the ship he shoved past me through a tight corridor. It would be the first in a string of assumptions I would make that night that would plunge me into and out of harrowing world where I would explore the fringes of rationality.

Tonight was the culmination of years of planning and preparation. ‘Do you know where Mellow Mountain is?’ I asked the receptionist. She pointed at the raised platform in the dark of the rocks way above, looking over the waves. The stairs were rickety and lights didn’t pave the way. I had expected a happy looking hut. I had passed two drunkards a km away who had pointed me in this direction and said that the mafia pay off the local authorities. I thought they were talking about the locan mafia. I later had reason to believe they were referring to the Russian mafia. Open secrets. I had read online that the place was towards one end of the beach when I had chanced upon this place of accommodation. It was just what I was looking for: somewhere close by to retreat to. I thought it would be my sanctuary. I was so wrong.

There was a row of very dark skinned Thais at a bench overlooking the steps. They didn’t look up as a passed, they all paid attention to their smartphones. The whole place was really odd. The music was lurid, not traditional drug music. It was a rather scary place. It was dark, and none of the Thais smiled. I looked at the first bar. There was marajuana art around. This wasn’t the place I was looking for. I went further in and saw a second bar, tucked into the corner. There were no signs, no prices, nothing advertised. This must be it.

I asked the bartender: ‘Can I have one?’. He asked ‘what do you want?’. I felt a lump in my throat. If the rumours weren’t true, this could be a big mistake. Thailand takes drug crime very seriously. I asked for a ‘milkshake’. The man went to the back. It was an obtuse time, just like I wanted. There didn’t seem to be any eyes on me. I peeped over and observed. It looked like he and his coworker were preparing some kind of root by chopping it up. It was dark coloured. It didn’t look like a mushroom. The drink prepared didn’t look anything like a milkshake: there was clearly no milk in it. It didn’t taste mushroomy. I drank it and retreated. The effects were initially mild. I waited to get a sense for how much lead time I had before I had to retreat to a safer space when I downed a second drink. I saw the boats at sea driving around. I thought maybe they were patrol boats sponsored by the local mafia to ensure there were no drug related deaths at sea: a sure fire way to curb tourism. From past experiences I know I have extreme tollerance for hallucinogenic experiences. For instance, with concentration and reason I can flux into and out of lucidity during DMT trips, irrespective of dose.

Soon I returned to those stairs, quite clearly affected, yet not arousing the attention of the dark skinned Thai’s above still who had probably and/or experienced all kinds of things in their day. I guessed they were the local mafia. In the lead up to my return for seconds I had enjoyed embracing the sand, looking out at the waves from the beach, tried seeing if I could have a more nuanced reading of Rationality from AI to zombies and explored past memories, cognitive functioning and such. Now it was time for me to reach a so called ‘Level 5 trip’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_experience#Level_5_.28Ineffable.29).

What happened over the course of the night will have a seperate post. This post has just been relevant background information. The rationality experiments and my interpretations are coming in the next.

I will give the post’s Latin names to make them easy to find. I don’t want to post so much so I will combine various maxims into say 2 seperate post. The maxims aptly describe the relevant themes:

Tantum nimirum ex publicis malis sentimus, quantum ad privatas res pertinet : nec in iis quicquam acrius quam pecuniae damnum stimulat. - We feel public misfortunes just so far as they affect our private circumstances, and nothing of this nature appeals more directly to us than the loss of money (Livy).

goldBis interimitur qui suis armis perit - He is doubly destroyed who perishes by his own arms. (Syrus)

Acerrima proximorum odia - The hatred of those most nearly connected is the bitterest of all (Tacit)

aegri somnia vana - a sick man's dream

Facilis descensus averno - The descent to Avernus (Hell) is easy (Virgil)

Graviora manent - Greater dangers await (Virgil)

Tempus edax rerum - Time is the devourer of things Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem - The one safety for the vanquished is to abandon hope of safety (Virgil)

Acclinis falsis animus meliora recusat - The mind intent upon false appearances refuses to admit better things (Horace)

Rant mode on:

Whenever Hawking blurts something out, mass media spread it around straight away. While he is probably OK with black holes, when it comes to global risks, his statements are not only false, but, one could say, harmful.

So, today he has said that within the millennia to come we’ll face the threat of creating artificial viruses and a nuclear war. This statement brings all the problems to about the same distance as that to the nearest black hole.

In fact, both a nuclear war and artificial viruses are realistic right now and can be used during our lifetime with probability as high as tens percent.

Feel the difference between chances for an artificial flu virus to exterminate 90% of population within 5 years (the rest would be finished off by other viruses) and suppositions regarding dangers over thousands of years.

The first thing is mobilizing, while the second one causes enjoyable relaxation.

He said: ‘Chances that a catastrophe on the Earth can emerge this year are rather low. However, they grow with time; so this undoubtedly will happen within the nearest one thousand or ten thousand years’

The scientist believes that the catastrophe will be the result of human activity: people can be destroyed by nuclear disaster or artificial virus spread. However, according to the physicist, the mankind still can save itself. For this end, colonization of other planets is needed. Reportedly, earlier Stephen Hawking stated that the artificial intelligence would be able to surpass the human one as soon as in 100 years.”

Also, the statement that migration to other planets automatically means salvation is false. What catastrophe can we escape if we have a colony on Mars? It will die off without supplies. If a world war started, nuclear missiles would reach it as well. In case of a slow global pandemia, people would bring it there like they bring AIDS virus now or used to bring plague on ships in the past. If hostile AI appeared, it would instantly penetrate to Mars via communication channels. Even gray goo can fly from one planet to another. Even if the Earth was hit by a 20-km asteroid, the amount of debris thrown into the space would be so great that they would reach Mars and fall there in the form of a meteorite shower.

I understand that simple solutions are luring, and a Mars colony is a romantic thing, but its usefulness would be negative. Even if we learned to build starships travelling at speeds close to that of light, they would primarily become a perfect kinetic weapon: collision of such a starship with a planet would mean death of the planet’s biosphere.

Finally, some words about AI. Why namely 100 years? Talking about risks, we have to consider a lower time limit, rather than a median. And the lower limit of estimated time to create some dangerous AI is 5 to 15 years, not 100. http://www.sciencealert.com/stephen-hawking-says-a-planetary-disaster-on-earth-is-a-near-certainty

Rant mode off

Comments by The Lion show up on his overview page but no longer in their original context (the permalinks say "There doesn't seem to be anything here.") What gives? In particular, that of 27 January 2016 02:16:08AM turned my inbox icon red but didn't show up in my inbox, which confused me.

I silently think I have conservative political values, yet my private lifestyle is anything but. In real life, I generally expouse fairly conservative views too, in contrast to my online posting behaviours. It’s one reason I am hesistant to be completely transparent about my LessWrong/reddit identities and my every day physical world identity.

I reckon it’s okay to have different attitudes to public and private life, since governance is differant than running your own life. However, the hypocrisy kinda unnerves me. My intuition is that conservative aesthetics make me less anxious. People around me will be more predictable and that’s a society I will feel safer in. But, I don’t trust the world to provide for me an acceptable life, so I life a free life of experimentation privately. Should I redefine my values or lifetyle?

Which is the best online dating site or dating app? Why?

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook wants to build an AI. That's a Facebook link; for anyone who for whatever reason doesn't want to go there, the Hacker News discussion includes one comment containing all Zuckerberg's text.

Oil prices have recently fallen to near record lows. What are the risks and benefits?

Risks:

• Increased instability in the Mideast as governments are less able to buy the loyalty of the people.
• Likely slow the transition to electric vehicles, may slow the overall decline of carbon emissions.
• Many job losses in petroleum-producing locations, especially higher cost producers.

Benefits:

• Possibly stimulate the global economy, especially good for fast-developing oil importers like China and India.
• Might push oil producers toward economic reforms that will be needed eventually anyway.
• Might help avert some of the resource-war scenarios that have been described as inevitable by Malthusians.

Debatable:

• Geopolitical power relatively shifts away from Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, toward NATO/OECD and China.

Any important dynamics I'm missing?

I would love to see a CFAR SuperBetter pack.

Why does my Karma score keep increasing when I don't do anything? It's a disincentive to post. . .?

Why isn't there empirical evidence in the Wikipedia article on investment strategy? Are the hypothesises financial engineers make unscientific?

Cost of being less wrong: increased cognitive load?

Benefit oblw: longer life expectancy?

Risk oblw: becoming a pariah in most crowds?