Open thread, Apr. 24 - Apr. 30, 2017

I had alot of fun helping to co-organize the NYC SSC meetup. I was wondering if people had advice on what questions to use an icebreaker when welcoming new people into the rationalist community. Here are two questions I have tried at the SSC meetup:

-"How long have you been reading Scot?" : Some people found this question obvious and uninspired but it worked pretty well.

-"Has Rationality has had direct practical benefits in your daily life?" : I think the later question would have worked better at a "lesswrong" not a SSC meetup. A common feeling was they valued "rationality" in discussion and weren't especially interested in using rationality for self improvement.

Does anyone have suggestions for better questions?

Reading an old comment under "Unequally yoked" that says:

Pope Benedict once talked about people who try and live with a question mark in the center of their lives. He said they always end up being functionally atheist.

I think this description is wonderful, and while a sin for Catholics, I invite all aspiring rationalists at living with a question mark at the center of their lives!

I really would prefer to the ability to see IR and UV, but in the meantime this is interesting. Sample:

...we designed a wearable passive multispectral device that uses two distinct transmission filters, one for each eye, to enhance the user's ability to perceive spectral information. We fabricated and tested a design that "splits" the response of the short-wavelength cone of individuals with typical trichromatic vision, effectively simulating the presence of four distinct cone types between the two eyes ("tetrachromacy"). Users of this device were able to differentiate metamers (distinct spectra that resolve to the same perceived color in typical observers) without apparent adverse effects to vision

Over the Hump, and Starting a Return to Normality

There are some downsides to being a data pack-rat, as well as the obvious up-sides.

I'm in the process of moving to a new house, and the last month has pretty much been dedicated to that project - everything from a new set of floorboards being laid down to finding the best stores near the new place to buy my favourite beverage (grapefruit Perrier). The process is still ongoing, and I'm still going to be paying rent at the old place for some months to come; for example, even after getting rid of nearly all my mass-market paperback novels, there are still a /lot/ of books in the old family library that are still going to have to be shlepped over to the new one, and not a single member of my family has great strength or endurance.

But most of the hard work and planning is done, and life is settling into a new normal: today, I hope and plan to apply for a new library card, do some banking, grab some income tax forms, and just maybe visit the nearby branch of a computer store to upgrade my laptop's RAM. My sleep schedule is still ridiculous, if I lose 50 pounds I'll still going to be overweight, asthma sucks... but a lot of the stresses from the old home are just plain gone. I am, as I see it, in about as good a mental state as I'm likely to be in the foreseeable future.

Which means that, barring unexpectable crises, it's time for me to start writing again. My current plan: When I hit my new local public library today, I'm going to sit down for a while and start going over my partial draft of 'Extracted', to both refamiliarize myself with it and to start nudging any details I find that seem to need editing. And, by the time I've gone over what I've already written, to start finishing writing what I didn't get around to typing out the last time I worked on the piece.

The main bit of uncertainty around this plan is that I have insufficient data to predict whether, how soon, and how severely I will go through my next bout of more-severe-than-everyday anhedonic depression. I'm hopeful that the release of stress from the old home will make such a bout less likely; but I'm also aware of the statistics that show that the act of moving to a new home adds its own form of stress. Barring low-probability black-swan events, my range of expected mid-term futures runs from going back to my previous levels of depression, all the way up to completing a novel and beginning the brand-new venture of learning about e-publishing.

Does anybody here know about http://www.mindhabits.com ? Seems they are building

Simple games that can reduce stress levels and boost your confidence and self-esteem!

Anybody tried this or know whether this is legit?

This looks interesting. Sample:

Two main sources of behaviour. Seems to map roughly to dual process theory? Bottom-up - perception-action cycle. Top-down - goal creation and enactment.

Different strengths and weaknesses, not clear which system should have control. Eg trying to concentrate on a problem while being distracted by traffic noises vs trying to concentrate on a problem while ignoring the oncoming car.

Conflict between the two is mediated by executive functions. Main components are working memory, goal management and attention.

and

Why interrupt ourselves, especially when we know the costs and we are trying to focus? How might tech exacerbate self-interruption?

Optimal foraging. Mariginal Value Theorem. Explore vs exploit - switch resources when predicted value of new resource outweighs switching costs. Accurate predictions of foraging behaviour in several animal species.

Information foraging. MVT has been applied to browsing patterns. Perhaps can explain self-interruption too?

Never ever, once, sometimes...

One problem I have with that post on generalizing from one example is that it somehow presupposes that the conclusions I draw from observing an isolated occurrence are somehow 'idle'. It's not for nothing that I think a man kicking a soda machine 'aggressive'. I might not even think it, unless I am asked; but I will certainly be wary of leaving my kid in his presence. I know what my kid's capable of - soda machines have nothing on him, and I don't want there to be any reason whatsoever to suppose he might be kicked. So yes, my labeling the angry man 'aggressive' is just a way to make a mental note in fine print.

...and so these are the kinds of statements that I expect to see on LW, but not in RL except as a joke.

Claim: EAs should spend a lot of energy and time trying to end the American culture war.

America, for all its terrible problems, is the world's leading producer of new technology. Most of the benefits of the new technology actually accrue to people who are far removed from America in both time and space. Most computer technology was invented in America, and that technology has already done worlds of good for people in places like China, India, and Africa; and it's going to continue help people all over the world in the centuries and millennia to come. Likewise for medical technology. If an American company discovers a cure for cancer, that will benefit people all over the globe... and it will also benefit the citizens of Muskington, the capitol of the Mars colony, in the year 4514.

It should be obvious to any student of history that most societies, in most historical eras, are not very innovative. Europe in the 1000s was not very innovative. China in the 1300s was not very innovative, India in the 1500s was not very innovative, etc etc. France was innovative in the 1700s and 1800s but not so much today. So the fact that the US is innovative today is pretty special: the ability to innovate is a relatively rare property of human societies.

So the US is innovative, and that innovation is enormously beneficial to humanity, but it's naive to expect that the current phase of American innovation will last forever. And in fact there are a lot of signs that it is about to die out. Certainly if there were some large scale social turmoil in the US, like revolution, civil war, or government collapse, it would pose a serious threat to America's ability to innovate.

That means there is an enormous ethical rationale for trying to help American society continue to prosper. There's a first-order rationale: Americans are humans, and helping humans prosper is good. But more important is the second-order rationale: Americans are producing technology that will benefit all humanity for all time.

Currently the most serious threat to the stability of American society is the culture war: the intense partisan political hatred that characterizes our political discourse. EAs could have a big impact by trying to reduce partisanship and tribalism in America, thereby helping to lengthen and preserve the era of American innovation.

test

A New Form of Social Withdrawal in Japan: A Review of Hikikomori

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4886853/

"hikikomori has become a silent epidemic with tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of cases now estimated in Japan. The differential diagnosis includes anxiety and personality disorders, but current nosology in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders may not adequately capture the concept of hikikomori. Treatment strategies are varied and lack a solid evidence basis,"

"A lifestyle centered at home No interest or willingness to attend school or work Persistence of symptoms beyond six months Schizophrenia, mental retardation or other mental disorders have been excluded Among those with no interest or willingness to attend school or work, those who maintain personal relationships (e.g., friendships) have been excluded."

First sexbot with machine learning set to ship next year

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/race-to-build-world-first-sex-robot

"The major breakthrough of McMullen’s prototype is artificial intelligence that allows it to learn what its owner wants and likes. It will be able to fill a niche that no other product in the sex industry currently can: by talking, learning and responding to her owner’s voice, Harmony is designed to be as much a substitute partner as a sex toy."

"A small-scale 2016 study by the University of Duisburg-Essen found that more than 40% of the 263 heterosexual men surveyed said they could imagine buying a sex robot for themselves now or in the next five years. Men in what they described as fulfilling relationships were no less likely than single or lonely men to express an interest in owning a sex robot."

Regarding an old comment that made me think.

Do you think that the world today is more fragile? For example, removing one every three people would cause a much greater collapse than what could be caused by a pandemic in the Middle Age?
I think this is the case, due to the level of specialized knowledge required to operate the world today and the very existence of nuclear power plants.
Another possibility is that a civilization can only contain so much complexity given a certain number of people, and so a one billion people civ cannot be more sophisticated than a three billions people civ. The next obvious question: is our optimized for the number of people that there are on the planet?
Anyone has any strong opinion about?

Swarms of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles Test New Dogfighting Skills

http://www.news.gatech.edu/2017/04/21/swarms-autonomous-aerial-vehicles-test-new-dogfighting-skills

“Right now, we’re more interested in the research questions about autonomous coordination among the vehicles and the tactical behavior of the groups of vehicles,” Pippin explained. “We are focusing our efforts on how these vehicles cooperate and want to understand what it means for them to operate as a team.”

“Both teams were trying to solve the same problem of flying a large swarm in a meaningful mission, and we came up with solutions that were similar in some ways and different in others,” said Charles Pippin, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. “By comparing how well each approach worked in the air, we were able to compare strategies and tactics on platforms capable of the same flight dynamics.”

Today's version of what's wrong with the medical system: https://www.salk.edu/news-release/new-method-predicts-will-respond-lithium-therapy/ was recently shared. The article is about a paper that successfully predicted which patients benefit from lithium supplementation.

It contains a very interesting quote:

“The fact that Gage’s group can replicate the hyperexcitability characteristic in neurons from additional bipolar disorder patients is very important. Findings like these are needed to utilize these cells to develop new drugs to treat mental illnesses.”

The naive person on the street might think that advances in predicting who reponds to lithium is important to allow doctors to give those patients lithium. That doesn't seem to be where the scientists see the value in this case. It's that the process helps with developing new drugs that can then be patented and given to patients.

New week, new problem.

https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/a-moral-problem/