If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Discussion of how to use college to get what you want from it, with rather a lot about the details you need to think about and check. For example, if you're looking for a degree for a profession, it's important to find out whether a particular degree meets the requirement-- and if you're hoping to make money from a profession, you need to check on whether the money's actually there.
An interesting concept: Idea Debt.
Idea Debt is when you spend too much time picturing what a project is going to be like, too much time thinking about how awesome it will be to have this thing done and in the world, too much time imagining how cool you will look, how in demand you’ll be, how much money you’ll make. And way too little time actually making the thing.
If you are interested in AI risk or other existential risks and want to help, even if you don't know how, and you either...
1. Live in Chicago
2. Attend the University of Chicago
3. Are are intending to attend the University of Chicago in the next two years.
...please message me.
I'm looking for people to help with some projects.
I would like to write a post dissecting the structure of AlphaGo, but I don't know what latitude / technical depth should the article have.
Should I start by explaining what an artificial neuron is? Should I explain combinatorial games? Who would care about the details of the structure of a convolutional neural network?
Decisions, decisions, decisions...
Winning Arguments: Interaction Dynamics and Persuasion Strategies in Good-faith Online Discussions by Chenhao Tan, Vlad Niculae, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Lillian Lee.
...Changing someone's opinion is arguably one of the most important challenges of social interaction. The underlying process proves difficult to study: it is hard to know how someone's opinions are formed and whether and how someone's views shift. Fortunately, ChangeMyView, an active community on Reddit, provides a platform where users present their own opinions and reasoning, invite o
Would anyone like to comment on Eliezer's facebook post about the AlphaGo victory over Fan Hui?
People occasionally ask me about signs that the remaining timeline might be short. It's very easy for nonprofessionals to take too much alarm too easily. Deep Blue beating Kasparov at chess was not such a sign. Robotic cars are not such a sign. This is.
How can you do your own research on a given subject? I'm not a scientist, just your average guy sitting in front of a screen, and lukeprog's posts makes me envy not having at least sixty points of reference I can base any opinion on.
Maybe "research" isn't the right word, but I don't know a word that fits better. What should I do and where should I look?
Are there any exercises similar to calibration questions where people are 1) asked a question and 2) given some info relevant for the answer, and then required to state how the info influenced the changes in the probabilities they state? I mean, if a brain 'does something similar to a Bayesian calculation', then it should be measurable, and maybe trainable even in 'vaguely stated' word-only problems. And if it is easier to do in some domains, it would be interesting why.
Evaluating gambles using dynamics by Ole Peters, Murray Gell-Mann
...Gambles are random variables that model possible changes in monetary wealth. Classic decision theory transforms money into utility through a utility function and defines the value of a gamble as the expectation value of utility changes. Utility functions aim to capture individual psychological characteristics, but their generality limits predictive power. Expectation value maximizers are defined as rational in economics, but expectation values are only meaningful in the presence of ensemble
Does the phenomenon described here has a name? Please disregard the political content of the quote, I am not interested in arguing which candidate is better.
...Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate. Therefore, she has far more supporters with loud, influential media platforms than her insurgent, socialist challenger. Therefore, the people with the loudest media platforms experience lots of anger and abuse from Sanders supporters and none from Clinton supporters; why would devoted media cheerleaders of the Clinton campaign experience abuse from Clin
Keeping secrets is a burden, or so the traditional wisdom goes. I googled: ''keeping secrets cognitive load''. The first result that referenced a sufficiently trustworthy source was a PDF hosted by Harvard uni. It was too fundamental research - experimental based on neuropsychological tests. I vaguely remember a key reason I abdicated from an intelligence analyst interview was reading about the negative consequences of secrecy. Based on the difficulty of finding clarity on this issue, I'll go with my subjective experience which is that keeping a secret is ...
And I am out myself.
If (1) it isn't too late and (2) this is your reason for departing rather than an opportunity for doing something you'd been kinda wanting to for ages, may I suggest that you not leave? Your presence here is valuable and I don't think one misstep changes that.
(I appreciate that #1 or #2 might well be false.)
Karma histogram program. Is there a webapp alternative? I don't know how to implement the Github code but I want to analyse and interpret my karma histogram.
Complice is a paid service. If you aren't desperate to cowork the effective altruism videochatroom or lesswrong equivelant, try tracking time which is free and more professional instead.
The reason though, that I prefer complice is the ontology. I have to categorise my tasks. What counts as workflow integration, what counts of inbox zero, and what as to the content of that email: e.g. acting on a newsletter from my daughter's swim pool place to do something? It's not compatible with the Mckinsey MECE ontology that I prefer. Meanwhile, complice is super expensive and the free version doesn't let me save my goals so they're lost forever. Manually tracking in excel gets really cluttered, too.
Let's say I make six predictions or statements that I believe to be true about someone I've never met and I say the statements taken as a whole are true with P = 0.7. Note that I do not claim to be psychic.
The P of each statement must then lie between 0.7 and 1.0, and if they are equal then the P of each statement is 0.7 ^ (1/6) = 0.94. Let's say 0.9 because I doubt any statement about this type of probability should be reported with two significant figures, and perhaps even one significant figure without an attached tolerance band is a bit of a stretch....
Why is the manosphere so maligned? It seems it's easier to ban men's rights activists than a whole lot worse people in society. Julien Blanc was banned from Australia for, from what I can see, basically amounts to BDSM and RooshV is widely accused of wanting to legalise rape and has recently been banned from Australia on that basis. I did a bit of snooping and found RooshV's article is specifically about how to stop rape and legalising rape of private property to specifically counter false rape accusations. It's a bad policy, but so is the libel. I'm reall...
A clever point on the EA reddit. Guessing the Open Philanthropy Project will sniff this out if its the case.
What does the evidence have to say about where to send effective altruism and/or rationality related (startups? happenings?) media release or news item to help it go viral' and get picked up by other news sources? Google Advertising? Facebook Advertising? The ethnic newspaper that operates in the next city over? Starting a meetup thread? Reuters? a Change.org petition? The Senate sub-committee on the boogey man?
how would you be different if you only told yourself great things, how would your life be different if you used all the wrongs as fuel to be massively successful?
Google search suggests: a positive psychology task generator webapp and positive psychology hackathons don't exist...yet
You seem to be confused here. Rape is and should be illegal. This however does not conflict with the idea that there are limits to what the state can do to obtain convictions in criminal cases. Laws prohibiting extracting confessions under torture, warrantless searches, the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, etc., are on the books to prevent innocent people from being convicted by overzealous prosecutors (or by an overzealous system). They are in no way an endorsement of the offending behavior.
Let's consider two of the lines from Jiro's post:
Put together, it seems obvious that Jiro is pointing out a verbal technicality and you're interpreting him as if he means what he's explicitly saying he doesn't mean.
Ji... (read more)