I am thinking of making a top-level post criticizing libertarianism, in spite of the current norm against discussing politics. Would you prefer that I write the post, or not write it?

If the future of the universe is a 'heat death' in which no meaningful information can be stored, and in which no meaningful computation is possible, what will it matter if the singularity happens or not?

Ordinarily, we judge the success of a project by looking at how much positive utility has come of it.

We can view the universe we live in as such a project. Engineering a positive singularity looks like the only really good strategy for maximizing the expression of complex human values (simplified as 'utility') in the universe.

But if the universe reaches a final heat death, so that no intelligent life exists, and there is no memory and no record of anything, what do the contents of the antecedent eons count for? There is no way to tell if the-universe-which-resulted-in-heat-death saw the rise of marvelous intelligence and value or remained empty and unobserved.

What is the utility of a project after all of its participants, and all records and memory of it, are utterly destroyed?

The pragmatic answer is simply 'carpe diem': make the best of this finite existence. This is what people have done for years before the ideas of the singularity and transhumanism had been formulated.

Transhumanist beliefs, including the prospect of 'immortality' or transcendence seem to be a way in which some cope with their fear of death. But I fail to see why death should be any less gloomy a prospect for a 3^^^3 year old being than it is for a 30 year old. By definition, one cannot 'reminisce' about one's accumulated positive experiences after death, so in one sense a 3^^^3 year old has actually lost more: vastly more information has been destroyed!

So, in short, I struggle to see a rationale for my intuitive belief that surviving into deep time is truly better than a natural human lifespan, for if heat death is inevitable, as seems to be the case, the end result--the final tally of utils accumulated--is exactly the same. 0.

Has anyone read "Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey" by R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa? Any thoughts on its quality?

I have a cognitive problem and I figured someone might be able to help with it.

I think I might have trouble filtering stimuli, or something similar. A dog barking, an ear ache, loud people, or a really long day can break me down. I start to have difficulty focusing. I can't hold complex concepts in my head. I'll often start a task, and quit in the middle because it feels too difficult and try to switch to something else, ultimately getting nothing done. I'll have difficulty deciding what to work on. I'll start to panic or get intimidated. It's really an issue.

I've found two things that help:

Music is good at filtering out noise and helping me focus. However, sometimes i can't listen to it or it is not enough.

The other thing is to make a extremely granular tasklist and then follow it without question. The tasks have to be really small and seem manageable.

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm not neurotypical in the broader sense, but I don't believe I fall on the autism spectrum.

This seems like a potentially significant milestone: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.

The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

I remember hearing a few anecdotes about abstaining for food for a period of time (fasting) and improved brain performance. I also seem to recall some pop-sci explanation involving detoxification of the body and the like. Today something triggered interest in this topic again, but a quick Google search did not return much on the topic (fasting is drowned in religious references).

I figure this is well within LW scope, so does anyone have any knowledge or links that offer more concrete insight into (or rebuttal of) this notion?

Rolf Nelson's AI deterrence doesn't work for Schellingian reasons: the Rogue AI has incentive to modify itself to not understand such threats before it first looks at the outside world. This makes you unable to threaten, because when you simulate the Rogue AI you will see its precommitment first. So the Rogue AI negates your "first mover advantage" by becoming the first mover in your simulation :-) Discuss.

In another comment I coined (although not for the first time, it turns out) the expression "Friendly Human Intelligence". Which is simply geekspeak for how to bring up your kids right and not make druggie losers, wholesale killers, or other sorts of paperclipper. I don't recall seeing this discussed on LessWrong. Maybe most of us don't have children, and Eliezer has said somewhere that he doesn't consider himself ready to create new people, but as the saying is, if not now, when, and if not this, what?

I don't have children and don't intend to. I have two nephews and a niece, but have not had much to do with their lives, beyond sending them improving books for birthdays and Christmas. I wonder if LessWrongers, with or without children, have anything to say on how to raise children to be rational non-paperclippers?

A friend linked me to this rather ambitiously described paper: An Algorithm for Consciousness:

This document offers a complete explanation of the hard problems of consciousness and free will, in only 34 pages. The explanation is given as an algorithm, that can be implemented on a computer as a software program. (Open-)Source code will be released by Jan 2011. A solid background in psychology, computer science & artificial intelligence is useful, but if you're prepared to follow the hyperlinks in the document, it should be possible for most people to enjoy.

The author wishes to remain anonymous, but is not a crank. He/she has 10 years professional experience building cutting-edge artificial intelligence, computer vision and machine learning systems that are used on 4 continents, and has degrees in computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

I haven't read past the first page yet (don't have time right now) but I thought that it might be something people here would be interested in.

Impossible motion: magnet-like slopes

http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/2010/impossible-motion-magnet-like-slopes/

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100511/full/news.2010.233.html

Crinimal profiling, good and bad

Article discusses the shift from impressive-looking guesswork to use of statistics. Also has an egregious example of the guesswork approach privileging the hypothesis.

HELP NEEDED Today if at all possible.

So I'm working on a Bayesian approach to the Duhem-Quine problem. Basically, the problem is that any experiment never tests a hypothesis directly but only the conjunction of the hypothesis and other auxiliary assumption. The standard method for dealing with this is to make

P(h|e)=P(h & a|e) + P(h & -a|e) (so if e falsifies h&a you just use the h&-a)

So if e falsifies h&a you end up with:

P(h|e) = P(e|h&-a) * P(h&-a) / P(e)

This guy Strevens objects on the grounds that e can impact h without impacting a. His example:

Newstein, a brilliant but controversial scientist, has asserted both that h is true and that e will be observed. You do not know Newstein’s reasons for either assertion, but if one of her claims turns out to be correct, that will greatly increase your confidence that Newstein is putting her brilliance to good use and thus your confidence that the other claim will also turn out to be correct. Because of your knowledge of Newstein’s predictions, then, your P(h|e) will be higher than it would be otherwise.

Am I crazy or shouldn't that information already be contained in the above formula? Specifically, the term P(e|h&-a) should be higher than it would otherwise.

Today the Pope finally admitted there has been a problem with child sex abuse by Catholic priests. He blamed it on sin.

What a great answer! It covers any imaginable situation. Sin could be the greatest tool for bad managers everywhere since Total Quality Management.

"Sir, your company, British Petroleum, is responsible for the biggest environmental disaster in America this decade. How did this happen, and what is being done to prevent it happening again?"

"Senator, I've made a thorough investigation, and I'm afraid there has been sin in the ranks of British Petroleum. BP has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the need for justice."

"Thank you, Mr. Hayward. I'm glad you're on top of the situation."

I wonder if I can use this at work.

It's a vicious cycle-- if you work on something that sounds crank-ish, you get defensive about being seen as a crank, and that defensiveness is also characteristic of cranks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

— Chad Orzel

This seems possibly broadly applicable to me; e.g. replace “crank” with “fanboy”.

Science.

To me it is a process, a method, an outlook on life. But so often it is used as a pronoun: "Science says tomatoes are good for you".

It should be used to encourage rational thinking, clarity of arguement and assumption and rigorous unbiased testing. The pursuit of knowledge and truth. Instead it is often seen as a club, to which you either belong by working in a scientific profession, or you do not.

As a child of a mixed religeon household I felt like an outcast from religeon from an early age - it didn't matter that I have beliefs of my own, if I didn't belong to a specific club then I didn't belong at all. Very few religeous people I met encourage me to have faith regardless of what that faith is.

I see a scientific approach to life and its mysteries as my way of forming my own "map of the territory" as others perhaps use religeon and I hope that as promoters of rationality that we can encourage scientific principles in others rather than making them feel like outcasts for not being in our "club".

"Effects of nutritional supplements on aggression, rule-breaking, and psychopathology among young adult prisoners"

Likely the effects were due to the fish oil. This study was replicating similar results seen in a UK youth prison.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123213582/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Also see this other study of the use of fish oil to present the onset of schizophrenia in a population of youth that had had one psychotic episode or similar reason to seek treatment. The p-values they got are ridiculous -- fish oil appears to be way more effective in reality than I would have expected.

http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/67/2/146

Take your fish oil, people.

Rationality comix!

Hover over the red button at the bottom (to the left of the RSS button and social bookmarking links) for a bonus panel.

Edit: "Whoever did the duplication" would be a better answer than "The guy who came first", admittedly. The duplicate and original would both believe themselves to be the original, or, if they are a rationalist, would probably withhold judgment.

Kaj_Sotala is doing a series of interviews with people in the SIAI house. The first is with Alicorn.

Edit: They are tagged as "siai interviews".

There an article in this month's Nature examining the statistical evidence for universal common descent. This is the first time someone has taken the massive amounts of genetic data and applied a Bayesian analysis to determine whether the existence of a universal common ancestor is the best model. Most of what we generally think of as evidence for evolution and shared ancestry is evidence for shared ancestry of large collections, such as mammals or birds, or for smaller groups. Some of the evidence is for common ancestry for a phylum. There is prior evidence for their shared ancestry based on primitive fossils and on the shared genetic code and extreme similarity of genomes across very different species. This is the first paper to make that last argument mathematically rigorous. When taken in this fashion, the paper more or less concludes that a Bayesian analysis using just the genetic and phylogenetic known data puts the universal common ancestor model as overwhelmingly more likely than other models. (The article is behind a paywall so until I get back to the university tomorrow I won't be able to comment on this in any substantial detail but this looks pretty cool and a good example how careful Bayesianism can help make something more precise).

I don't think that the math in Aumann's agreement theorem says what Aumann's paper says that it says. The math may be right, but the translation into English isn't.

Aumann's agreement theorem says:

Let N1 and N2 be partitions of Omega ... Ni is the information partition of i; that is, if the true state of the world is w [an element of Omega], then i is informed of that element Pi(w) of Ni that contains w.

Given w in Omega, an event E is called common knowledge at w if E includes that member of meet(N1, N2) that contains w.

Let A be an event, and let Qi denote the posterior probability p(A|Ni) of A given i's information; i.e., Qi(w) [ = p(A | Pi(w)) ] = p(A ^ Pi(w) / p(Pi(w)).

Proposition: Let w be in Omega ... If it is common knowledge at w that Q1 = q1 and Q2 = q2, then q1 = q2.

Proof: Let P be the member of meet(N1, N2) that contains w. Write P = union over all j of Pj, where the Pj are disjoint members of P1. Since Q1 = q1 throughout P, we have p(A ^ Pj) / p(Pj) = q1 for all j; hence p(A ^ Pj) = q1p(Pj), and so by summing over j we get p(A^P) = q1p(P). Similarly p(A^P) = q2p(P), and so q1=q2.

meet(N1, N2) is not an intersection; it's a very aggressive union of the subsets in the partitions N1 and N2 of Omega. It's generated this way:

M = {w}, Used = {}

while (M neq Used)

 Take an element m from M \ Used.
Find H1 in N1 and H2 in N2 containing m.
M = union(M, H1, H2).
Used = Used u {m}

Note in particular that P is a member of meet(N1, N2) that contains elements of Omega taken from H2, that are not in H1. To say that Q1 = q1 throughout P means that, for every x in P, Q1(x) = p(A | P1(x)) = q1. This is used to infer that p(A ^ Pj) = p(Pj) q1 for every Pj in N1.

This is a very strange thing to believe, given the initial conditions. The justification (as Robin Hanson pointed out to me) is that "common knowledge at w that Q1=q1" is defined to mean just that: Q1(x) = q1 for all x in the member P of the meet(N1,N2) containing w.

Now comes the translation into English. Aumann says that this technical definition of "common knowledge at w of the posteriors" means the same as "agent 1 and agent 2 both know both of their posteriors". And the justification for that is this: "Suppose now that w is the true state of the world, P1 = P1(w), and E is an event. To say that 1 'knows' E means that E includes P1. To say that 1 knows that 2 knows E means that E includes all P2 in N2 that intersect P1. ..." et cetera, to closure.

And this, I think, is wrong. If 1 knows that 2 knows E, 1 knows that E includes P1 union some P2 that intersects with P1, not that E includes P1 union all P2 that intersect with P1. So the "common knowledge" used in the theorem doesn't mean the same thing at all that we mean in English when we say they "know each others' posteriors".

Also, Aumann adds after the proof that it implicitly assumes that the agents know each others' complete partition functions over all possible worlds. Which is several orders of magnitude of outlandish; so the theorem can never be applied to the real world.

I have an idea that may create a (small) revenue stream for LW/SIAI. There are a lot of book recommendations, with links to amazon, going around in LW, and many of them do not use an affiliate code. Having a script add a LessWrong affiliate code to those links that don't already have one may lead to some income, especially given that affiliate codes persist and may get credited for unrelated purchases later in the day.

I believe Posterous did this, and there was a minor PR hubbub about it, but the main issue was that they did not communicate the change properly (or at all). Also, given that LW/SIAI are not-for-profit endeavours, this is much easier to swallow. In fact, if it can be done in an easy-to-implement way, I think quite a few members with popular blogs may be tempted to apply this modification to their own blogs.

Does this sound viable?

The moral life of babies. This is an article that also recently appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

It covers various scientific experiments to explore the mental life of babies, finding evidence of moral judgements, theory of mind, and theory of things (e.g. when two dolls are placed behind a screen, and the screen is removed, 5-month-old babies expect to see two dolls).

Unlike many psychological experiments which produce more noise than signal, "these results were not subtle; babies almost always showed this pattern of response."

It also discusses various responses to the existence of innate morality, and the existence of "higher" adult morality -- caring about people who cannot possibly be of any benefit to oneself.

How should one reply to the argument that there is no prior probability for the outcome to some quantum event that that already happened and splits the world into two worlds, each with a different outcome to some test (say, a "quantum coin toss")? The idea is that if you merely sever the quantum event and consider different outcomes to the test (say, your quantum coin landed heads), and consider that the outcome could have been different (your quantum coin could have landed tails), there is no way to really determine who would be "you." Is it necessary to apply the SSA or some form of the SSSA? To me it seems that it should be allowed to rigidly maintain your identity while allowing the outcome of the quantum coin toss to vary across those two worlds. One could then base the prior probability of the coin landing heads in your world on the empirical evidence that quantum coin tosses of that type land heads with frequency 0.5 in any particular instance of a world history.

Cool paper: When Did Bayesian Inference Become “Bayesian”?

http://ba.stat.cmu.edu/journal/2006/vol01/issue01/fienberg.pdf

Most people's intuition is that assassination is worse than war, but simple utilitarianism suggests that war is much worse.

I have some ideas about why assassination isn't a tool for getting reliable outcomes-- leaders are sufficiently entangled in the groups that they lead that removing a leader isn't like removing a counter from a game, it's like cutting a piece out of a web which is going to rebuild itself in not quite the same shape-- but this doesn't add up to why assassination could be worse than war.

Is there any reason to think the common intuition is right?

You know, lots of people claim to be good cooks, or know good cooks, or have an amazing recipe for this or that. But Alicorn's cauliflower soup... it's the first food that, upon sneakily shoveling a fourth helping into my bowl, made me cackle maniacally like an insane evil sorcerer high on magic potions of incredible power, unable to keep myself from alerting three other soup-enjoying people to my glorious triumph. It's that good.

Entertainment for out-of-work Judea Pearl fans: go to your local job site and search on the word "causal", and then imagine that all those ads aren't just mis-spelling the word "casual"...

No-name terrorists now CIA drone targets

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/07/wired.terrorist.drone.strikes/index.html?hpt=C1

I'm looking at the forecast for the next year on CNN Money for Google stock (which will likely be an outdated link very soon). But while it's relevant...

I don't know much economics, but this forecast looks absurd to me. What are the confidence intervals? According to this graph, am I pretty much guaranteed to make vast sums of money simply by investing all of what I have in Google stock? (I'm assuming that this is just an example of the world being mad. Unless I really should buy some stock?) What implications does this sort of thing have on very unsavvy investors who look at graphs like that and instantly invest thousands of dollars? Do they win at everything forever? What am I missing?

If we get forums, I'd like a projects section. A person could create a project, which is a form centered around a problem to work on with other people over an extended period of time.

Self-forgiveness limits procrastination

Wohl's team followed 134 first year undergrads through their first mid-term exams to just after their second lot of mid-terms. Before the initial exams, the students reported how much they'd procrastinated with their revision and how much they'd forgiven themselves. Next, midway between these exams and the second lot, the students reported how positive or negative they were feeling. Finally, just before the second round of mid-terms, the students once more reported how much they had procrastinated in their exam preparations.

The key finding was that students who'd forgiven themselves for their initial bout of procrastination subsequently showed less negative affect in the intermediate period between exams and were less likely to procrastinate before the second round of exams. Crucially, self-forgiveness wasn't related to performance in the first set of exams but it did predict better performance in the second set.

Pre-commitment Strategies in Behavioral Economics - PowerPoint by Russell James. Not deep, which is sometimes a good thing.

First step in the AI take-over: gather funds. Yesterday's massive stock market spike took place in a matter of minutes, and it looks like it was in large part due to "glitches" in automatic trading programs. Accenture opened and closed at $41/share, but at one point was trading for $0.01/share. Anyone with $1000, lighting reflexes, and insider knowledge could've made $4.1M yesterday. For every $1000 they had.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/05/the_market_just_flipped_out_ma.html

Next month: our new overlords reveal themselves?

Tough financial question about cryonics: I've been looking into the infinite banking idea, which actually has credible supporters, and basically involves using a mutual whole life insurance policy as a tax shelter for your earnings, allow you to accumulate dividends thereon tax free ("'cause it's to provide for the spouse and kids"), and withdraw from your premiums and borrow against yourself (and pay yourself back).

Would having one mutual whole life insurance policy keep you from having a separate policy of the kind of life insurance needed to fund a cryonic self-preservation project? Would the mutual whole life policy itself be a way to fund cryopreservation?

Don't know if anyone else was watching the stock market meltdown in realtime today but as the indices were plunging down the face of what looked a bit like an upside down exponential curve driven by HFT algorithms gone wild and the financial news sites started going down under the traffic I couldn't help thinking that this is probably what the singularity would look like to a human. Being invested in VXX made it particularly compelling viewing.

Neanderthal genome reveals interbreeding with humans:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18869-neanderthal-genome-reveals-interbreeding-with-humans.

The Cognitive Bias song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RsbmjNLQkc

Not very good, but, you know, it's a song about cognitive bias, how cool is that?

The unrecognized death of speech recognition

Interesting thoughts about the limits encountered in the quest for better speech recognition, the implications for probabilistic approaches to AI, and "mispredictions of the future".

What do y'all think?

Convergence: Threat or Menace? : How to Create the Ultimate TED Talk.

Apparently it is all too easy to draw neat little circles around concepts like "science" or "math" or "rationality" and forget the awesome complexity and terrifying beauty of what is inside the circles. I certainly did. I recommend all 1400 pages of "Molecular Biology Of The Cell" (well, at least the first 600 pages) as an antidote. A more spectacularly extensive, accessible, or beautifully illustrated textbook I have never seen.

Curiously, what happens when I refresh LW (or navigate to a particular LW page like the comments page) and I get the "error encountered" page with those little witticisms? Is the site 'busy' or being modified or something else ...? Also, does everyone experience the same thing at the same moment or is it a local phenomenon?

Thanks ... this will help me develop my 'reddit-page' worldview.

Is it possible to change the time zone in which LW displays dates/times?

I noticed something recently which might be a positive aspect of akrasia, and a reason for its existence.

Background: I am generally bad at getting things done. For instance, I might put off paying a bill for a long time, which seems strange considering the whole process would take < 5 minutes.

A while back, I read about a solution: when you happen to remember a small task, if you are capable of doing it right then, then do it right then. I found this easy to follow, and quickly got a lot better at keeping up with small things.

A week or two into it, I thought of something evil to do, and following my pattern, quickly did it. Within a few minutes, I regretted it and thankfully, was able to undo it. But it scared me, and I discontinued my habit.

I'm not sure how general a conclusion I can draw from this; perhaps I am unusually prone to these mistakes. But since then I've considered akrasia as a sort of warning: "Some part of you doesn't want to do this. How about doing something else?"

Now when the part of you protesting is the non-exercising part or the ice-cream eating part, then akrasia isn't being helpful. But... it's worth listening to that feeling and seeing why you are avoiding the action.

Geocities Less Wrong

Is Eliezer alive and well? He's not said anything here (or on Hacker News, for that matter) for a month...

I have a (short) essay, 'Drug heuristics' in which I take a crack at combining Bostrom's evolutionary heuristics and nootropics - both topics I consider to be quite LW-germane but underdiscussed.

I'm not sure, though, that it's worth pursuing in any greater depth and would appreciate feedback.

By the way: getting crashes on the comments page again. Prior to 1yp8 works and subsequent to 1yp8 works; I haven't found the thread with the broken comment.

Edit: It's not any of the posts after 23andme genome analysis - $99 today only in Recent Posts, I believe.

Edit 2: Recent Comments still broken for me, but ?before=t1_1yp8 is no longer showing the most recent comments to me - ?before=t1_1yqo continues where the other is leaving off.

Edit 3: Recent Comments has now recovered for me.