Open thread, Jan. 25 - Jan. 31, 2016

Hmm. review scared me a bit, and the home page talking about incredibly nearsighted populist economics is a huge turn-off. Still, probably need to read it.

Is the kindle version different in any way from the free mobi file? I'll gladly spend $5 for good formatting or easier reading, but would prefer not to pay Amazon if they're not providing value.

Donated, but it only came to $1205.

(CFAR, did you lose the currency selection option on your donate page in the past few days? I appreciated that option. It's easier than guessing an approximate dollar amount and then potentially going back if it converts to a GBP amount sufficiently far from what I intended.)

I've briefly looked it up and it's interesting. You've obviously focused a lot on world-building, so kudos to that.
What I'm not seeing is an interesting developement: there are many directions the plot could go, but you need to choose one and explore that.
I don't know much about the literary trope of the last man on Earth, but it's interesting that the protagonist might not be the last man, but the last sane man, akin to "I am legend".
Will there be any kind of conflict? How do you plan the story to end?

I have read it and added several comments.

https://research.tufts-nemc.org/cear4/AboutUs/WhatistheCEARegistry.aspx

Also look into the Global Burden of Disease.

This sounds like someone who's salient feature is math anxiety from high school asking how to be a research director at CERN. It's not just that the salient feature seems at odds with the task, it's that the task isn't exactly something you just walk into, while you sound like you're talking about helping someone overcome a social phobia by taking a part-time job at supermarket checkout. Is your friend someone who wins International Math Olympiads?

He sounds like someone with a phobia of fire wanting to be a fireman. Why does he want to work on FAI? Would not going anywhere near the subject work for him instead?

If someone has anxiety about a topic, I suggest they go after all the normal anxiety treating methods. SSC has a post about Things that Sometimes Work If You Have Anxeity, though actually going to see a therapist and getting professional help would likely help more.

If he wants to try exposure therapy, good results have apparently recently occurred from doing that while on propranalol.

Working on AI research and working on FAI research aren't the same thing. I think it's likely a bad idea to not distinguish between the two when talking with a friend who wants to go into research and fears that UFAI will wipe us out.

More to the core of the issue desensitization training is a slow way to deal with fears and I'm not sure that it even works in this context. A good therapist or coach has tools to help people deal with fears.

My experience is mostly with formula grants, where the grant is mostly a formality like the EFT reimbursement. Many grants have expected recipients. Others are desperately seeking new applicants and ideas. From the outside, it is difficult to tell which is which, and from the inside grantor agencies often have trouble telling why random outsiders are applying to their intentionally exclusive grants but they have trouble finding good applicants for the ones where they want new folks.

The ability to write a successful grant is a skill. Some people in the EA community could likely do this successfully if they focus on getting good at it. Other people might not have the relevant skill set.

The title of the article on charity seems clickbait-y to me. I think that if a charity had negative utility, that would imply that burning a sum of money would be preferable to donating that money to that charity. However, this is not the thesis of the article; instead, the article's thesis is:

when non-profit organizations conduct a successful marketing campaign they do not collect more money for charity. Instead they take it away from other charitable causes.

Have you read much Feynman? He has some stories of how his father encouraged him to develop the scientific mindset (like this) that might be helpful. The core thing seems to be focusing on the act of thinking things through, not the memory trick of knowing how things are labeled. I'm not sure how to incorporate that into biology, though.

I'm sure that the DeepMind team would be interested in an answer too. I think the CPU/GPU cluster that powers AlphaGo could actually do much better in science (especially biology) than the typical six-year-old.

Hi k_ebel. I'm not sure whether this is the best place for getting in touch with people on short notice (though I'm open to stand corrected). A more immediate way to get in touch and discuss matters is the LW Slack https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Less_Wrong_Slack or the LW irc.

The Nash hotel is cheap and close, if a bit old. Plus, you know, once you're there you can't find a better hotel.

There's a whole -osphere full of blogs out there, many of them political. Any of those would be better places to talk about it than LW.

Another sad example of a problem that would be difficult but not impossible to solve rationally in theory, but in real life the outcome will be very far from optimal for many reasons (human stupidity, mindkilling, conflicts of interest, problems with coordination, etc.).

There are many people trying to escape from a horrible situation, and I would really want to help them. There are also many people pretending to be in the same situation in order to benefit from any help offered to the former; that increases the costs of the help. A part of what created the horrible situation is in the human heads, so by accepting the refugees we could import a part of what they are trying to escape from.

As usual, the most vocal people go to two extremes: "we should not give a fuck and just let them die", or trying to censor the debate about all the possible risks (including the things that already happened). Which makes it really difficult to publicly debate solutions that would both help the refugees and try to reduce the risk.

Longer-term consequences: If we let the refugees in, it will motivate even more people to come. If we don't let the refugees in, we are giving them the choice to either join the bad guys or die (so we shouldn't be surprised if many of them choose to join the bad guys).

Supporting Assad, as a lesser evil than ISIS is probably the best realistic option, but kinda disappointing. (Also anything that gives more power to Russia creates more problems in long term.) Doesn't solve the underlying problem, that the states in the area are each a random mix of religions and ethnicities, ready to kill each other. A long-term solution would be rewriting the map, to split the groups who want to cut each other's throats into different states. No chance to make Turkey agree on having Kurdistan as a neighbor. Etc.

If I were a king of Europe, my solution would be more or less to let the refugees in, but to have them live under Orwellian conditions, which would expire in 5 or 10 years after their coming assuming they commited no crimes (a trivial crime would merely extend the period, a nontrivial crime would lead to deportation, with biometric data taken so the person doesn't get a second chance). For example, there would be a limit of one refugee family per street, so they cannot create ghettos. Mandatory lessons on how to fit in the culture. Islam heavily controlled, only the most nonviolent branches allowed.

Tim on the LW Slack gave an impressive illustration of the different levels the refugee crisis can be seen. He was referring to Constructive Development Theory which you might want to look up for further context. I quote verbatim with his permission:

As an example of different thinking at different levels consider the "boat people" issue here in Australia. Australia is an Island so the only way to get here is by boat or by air. We fine airlines and commercial ships who bring people without valid visas. People get a tourist visa and overstay (thus we may it hard for people from poor countries to get tourist visas as my sister in law can attest) or they come here by boat without a visa. Many of the people who arrive by boat are refugees according to the UN definition, and others are economic migrants.

Initially the government did not know what to do. Then they implemented a solution to turn back the boats. Then this policy was rescinded to great fanfare and the boats resumed. Many people drowned in these leaky un-seaworthy boats. Then the policy was resumed again. Currently the boats are diverted to various remote islands and the people are resettled in various places that are not first world countries and are usually not considered desirable places to live eg Papua New Guinea. Before resettlement, which can take years, people are placed in detention. This includes children. Conditions are unpleasant.

This policy is very controversial. Many people regard it as morally indefensible. The detention of children is a particularly hot issue. The Uniting Church around the corner has a sign saying "children do not belong in detention".

I will try to describe how level 2 3 4 and 5 people might approach the issue. Please bear in mind I am not trying to argue a position on the issue but just to illustrate how people might approach it. You will see they often use the same word to mean very different things. Also, you will see that people tend to misinterpret the thinking of people at a higher level, in terms they understand. This usually means they map the higher level thinking into a lower level.

Level 2 (primary school / gangster): This migrants might take my job, or compete for government money or scarce housing. So I don't want them. I might have to pay higher taxes to support them. So I don't want them. I don't like people who look or act different from me. They smell funny and talk funny so I don't want them. The migrants will boost demand for housing and infrastructure which will be good for my company and I will make more money. So I want them.

Level 3 (teenage idealist or person with 'tribal' loyalties): (eg IMHO http://greens.org.au/policies/immigration-refugees) Jesus himself was a refugee. We should be compassionate and let them stay. If people came all this way they must have a good reason so we should let them stay. This policy is cruel and must end. You simply cannot have children in detention. This is not an issue of defense or border security. This problem is our fault because we participated in .

Level 2 people tend to think of Level 3 people as bleeding hearts, out of touch with the real world. They can also get very angry because the migrants tend to end up in the suburbs where level 2 people live rather than level 3 people. See this trenchant satire of singer and social activist Joan Baez (from the 1960s -may offend!) "pull the triggers we're with you all the way - all the way across the bay".

WARNING MAY OFFEND https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NafrFdBXfrk WARNING MAY OFFEND(edited)

Level 4 (full modern adult / systematic thinker): Indeed we should be kind to vulnerable people. Let's see how we can best do that. Perhaps we should increase our refugee quota which is quite low. People often drown when they come by boat so we should discourage that. Unfortunately this may involve some people being detained - I feel sad about that. If we can get the message out, people will stop coming by boat and the drownings and the need for detention will end though. We hope this will be a temporary situation. Rather let's select the best way we know how from the 40,000,000 refugees around the world and bring them in safely by air. We need measures to discourage economic migration as we cannot take 40m refugees let alone 2b people from poorer countries. Foreign aid is far more cost effective at improving people's lives than economic migration. We should substantially increase foreign aid. Also we need to ensure that the people who come in are not extremists or criminals. So we need to assess people before we bring them in.

In my experience people at level 3 tend to interpret level 4 arguments as being at level 2. There is a sub-second delay before accusations of racism etc are leveled. Level 2 people tend to think level 4 people are stupid.

Level 5 (post-modern): What does this debate and how rancorous it is tell us about ourselves? How do we deal with a situation where millions of people live in abject poverty while we live in relative luxury? Given that evidently people are not prepared to share the wealth evenly? Can there be a way to bring people with level 2 / 3 thinking and with very different belief systems into our community in a way that will work? What can we learn from people with very different world views? Can we look at migrant groups who have done well and those who have not and see what we can learn from this - about them and about us? Can we look at root causes for why countries are poor and why there are wars? Can we attack the problems at a higher level? Maybe our thinking about these problems is part of the problem?

People at lower levels tend to think level 5 people are off with the fairies.

Better yet, has anyone here changed any part of their life because of refugee crisis? Why did you do this? Why haven't you done this before? Thoughts are less interesting than actions.

...and what is 'plants contaminated by soil'?

I have thought about this, too. I am currently not publishing my coursework (mostly programming / lab reports) because the tasks may be used again in the following year. I do not want to force instructors to make new exercises for each course and I don't think I'd get much use out of publishing them. The argument wouldn't apply to essays, of course.

Cities are where they are because of actual reasons of geography, not just people plopping things down randomly on a map. You need to get stuff into them, stuff out of them, have the requisite power and water infrastructure to get to them (ESPECIALLY in California)... they aren't something you plop down randomly on a whim.

A lot of Californians like those big open spaces. Others don't want developments that make it easier for poor people to live around them (due to fear of crime, "bad schools" or other unpleasantness.)

From 1969 onward in California, “progressivism” has chiefly been about preserving privilege, especially the privilege of living in an uncrowded bucolic manner in the finest landscapes (typically, the coast in Southern California, the first valley in from the coast in Northern California) by blocking on environmentalist grounds developments that would make these regions more affordable to more people.

San Francisco is now one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world, and the populace wants to keep it that way.

I guess because people want to live in the existing cities? It's not like there is nowhere to live in California--looking at some online apartment listings you can rent a 2 bedroom apt in Bakersfield CA for $700/month. But people still prefer to move to San Francisco and pay $5000/month.

Environmental Impact Statements :-D

On a bit more serious note, the usual thing -- you can build a city in the middle of a desert, but why would people want to live there? People want to live in LA or SF, not just in Californian boondocks...

I'm dreaming of a huge solar panels field that powers a desalinization complex and Nanoclay seeded desert... Alas, if I only had a couple hundred million dollars...

High quality infrastructure and community services are expensive, but taxpayers are reluctant to relocate to the new community until the infrastructure and services exist. It's a bootstrap problem. Haven't you ever played SimCity?

The the Alpha Go Discussion Post.

AlphaGo uses two deep neural networks to prune the enormous search tree of a Go position, and it does so unsupervised.

lol no. The pruning ('policy') network is entirely the result of supervised learning from human games. The other network is used to evaluate game states.

Your other ideas are more interesting, but they are not related to AlphaGo specifically, just deep neural networks.

In animal training it is said that best way to get rid of an undesired behaviour is to train the animal with an incompatible behaviour. For example if you have a problem with your dog chasing cats, train it to sit whenever it sees a cat -- it can't sit and chase at the same time. Googling "incompatible behavior" or "Differential Reinforcement of an Incompatible Behavior" yields lots of discussion.

The book Don't Shoot the Dog talks a lot about this, and suggests that the same should be true for people. (This is a very Less Wrong-style book: half if it is very expert advice on animal training, half of it is animal-training-inspired self-help, which is probably on much less solid ground, but presented in a rational, scientific, extremely appealing style.)

I think it's certainly true. I suppose it depends on your definition of "habit"...

Isn't much of what we do habitual, whether it benefits us or not? In this way, you have either good habits or bad that are reciprocals of one another.

For example, people who refrain are not said to have a "habit of not biting their nails". But that is, I think, what is happening.

Was that "How true?" or "How true!"?

I think it is true, with the proviso that the habit to make can be the habit of noticing when the old habit is about to happen and not letting it.

I think there is very high value in sincerity, that both of the qualities you've described are heavily attached to sincerity, and that the effective and regular signaling of sincerity is going to be pretty much impossible to maintain without actually being sincere. If you really want to be effective in these areas, you might try to become easygoing and less selfish rather than trying to figure out how to fake those things.

Those evolutionary arguments seem like not understanding the cognitive-evolutionary boundary. If you go with the "evolution is about survival and reproduction, so besides sex and murder everything else is a hypocrisy", you explain away altruism, but at the same time you explain away almost everything else. The argument seems sane only when it is used selectively.

Note to readers: this "hypothetical" scenario was actually this exchange.

You're reading too much into just a few words, and you seem overconfident in your ability to divine other people's intentions. Interpreting the above exchange as a "mind game" is ridiculously paranoid.

You're solving for a supposed problem that does not exist at all.

Stop spreading bullshit.