Summary/TL;DR: this piece offers Fermi Estimates of the value of those in EA, focusing on the distinctions between typical EA members and dedicated members (defined below). These estimates suggest that, compared to the current movement baseline, we should prioritize increasing the number of “typical” EA members and getting more non-EA people to behave like typical EA members, rather than getting typical EAs to become dedicated ones.

[Acknowledgments: Thanks to Tom Ash, Jon Behar, Ryan Carey, Denis Drescher, Michael Dickens, Stefan Schubert, Claire Zabel, Owen Cotton-Barratt, Ozzie Gooen, Linchuan Zheng, Chris Watkins, Julia Wise, Kyle Bogosian, Max Chapnick, Kaj Sotaja, Taryn East, Kathy Forth, Scott Weathers, Hunter Glenn, Alfredo Parra, William Kiely,  Jay Quigley, and others who prefer to remain anonymous for looking at various draft versions of this post. Thanks to their feedback, the post underwent heavy revisions. Any remaining oversights, as well as all opinions expressed, are my responsibility.]

This article is a follow-up to "Celebrating All Who Are In Effective Altruism"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-happiness-code.html

Long. Mostly quite positive, though does spend a little while rolling its eyes at the Eliezer/MIRI connection and the craziness of taking things like cryonics and polyamory seriously.

Jaan Tallinn has suggested creating a toy model of the various common AI arguments, so that they can be analysed without loaded concepts like "autonomy", "consciousness", or "intentionality". Here a simple attempt for the "treacherous turn"; posted here for comments and suggestions.

Meet agent L. This agent is a reinforcement-based agent, rewarded/motivated by hearts (and some small time penalty each turn it doesn't get a heart):

A lot of people have said that they never look at Main, only Discussion. And indeed, LW's Google Analytics stats say that Main only gets one-third of the views that Discussion does.

Because of this, I thought that I'd point out that December has been an unusually lively month for Main, with several high-quality posts that you may be interested in reading out if you haven't already:

• LessWrong 2.0 (Vaniver): discussion about what to do with LW in order to stop its decline. Different from previous discussions in that this time, MIRI and TrikeApps have agreed to make the changes that result from the discussion.
• Why startup founders have mood swings (and why they may have uses) (AnnaSalamon and Duncan_Sabien): what the title says
• Results of a One-Year Longitudinal Study of CFAR Alumni (Unnamed): CFAR has studied the impact of their workshops on people a year after taking the workshops, and have promising results.
• The art of grieving well (Valentine): a beautiful and important post on the function of grief, and how to make the best out of it. A post intended for a sequence on "the sub-art of subconsciously seeking out and eliminating ugh fields and also eliminating the inclination to form them in the first place".
• European Community Weekend 2016 (nino): ECW2016 is confirmed to happen!
• Why CFAR? The view from 2015 (PeteMichaud): a report on what CFAR has achieved in 2015, how it has changed, and what it will do in the future.

      1. Problem

In the market economy production is driven by monetary incentives – higher reward for an economic activity makes more people willing to engage in it. Internet forums follow the same principle but with a different currency - instead of money the main incentive of internet commenters is the reaction of their audience. A strong reaction expressed by a large number of replies or “likes” encourages commenters to increase their output. Its absence motivates them to quit posting or change their writing style.

On neutral topics, using audience reaction as an incentive works reasonably well: attention focuses on the most interesting or entertaining comments. However, on partisan issues, such incentives become counterproductive. Political forums and newspaper comment sections demonstrate the same patterns:

The data suggests that the easiest way to maximize the number of replies is to write posts that are disliked by most readers. For instance, articles with the karma of -1 on average generate twice as many comments (20.1±3.4) as articles with the karma of +1 (9.3±0.8).

2. Technical Solution

Enabling constructive discussion between people with different ideologies requires reversing the incentives – people need to be motivated to write posts that sound persuasive to the opposite side rather than to their own supporters.

We suggest addressing this problem that this problem by changing the voting system. In brief, instead of votes from all readers, comment ratings and position on the page should be based on votes from the opposite side only. For example, in the debate on minimum wage, for arguments against minimum wage only the upvotes of minimum wage supporters would be counted and vice versa.

The new voting system can simultaneously achieve several objectives:

·         eliminate incentives for preaching to the choir

·         give posters a more objective feedback on the impact of their contributions, helping them improve their writing style

·     focus readers’ attention on comments most likely to change their minds instead of inciting comments that provoke an irrational defensive reaction.

3. Testing

If you are interested in measuring and improving your persuasive skills and would like to help others to do the same, you are invited to take part in the following experiment:

Step I. Submit Pro or Con arguments on any of the following topics (up to 3 arguments in total):

     Should the government give all parents vouchers for private school tuition?

     Should developed countries increase the number of immigrants they receive?

     Should there be a government mandated minimum wage?

Step II. For each argument you have submitted, rate 15 arguments submitted by others.

Step III.  Participants will be emailed the results of the experiment including:

-         ratings their arguments receive from different reviewer groups (supporters, opponents and neutrals)

-         the list of the most persuasive Pro & Con arguments on each topic (i.e. arguments that received the highest ratings from opposing and neutral groups)

-         rating distribution in each group

Step IV (optional). If interested, sign up for the next round.

The experiment will help us test the effectiveness of the new voting system and develop the best format for its application.

These ideas came out of a recent discussion on actually trying at Citadel, Boston's Less Wrong house.

What does "Actually Trying" mean?

Actually Trying means applying the combination of effort and optimization power needed to accomplish a difficult but feasible goal. The effort and optimization power are both necessary.

Failure Modes that can Resemble Actually Trying

Pretending to try

Pretending to try means doing things that superficially resemble actually trying but are missing a key piece. You could, for example, make a plan related to your goal and diligently carry it out but never stop to notice that the plan was optimized for convenience or sounding good or gaming a measurement rather than achieving the goal. Alternatively, you could have a truly great plan and put effort into carrying it out until it gets difficult.

Trying to Try

Trying to try is when you throw a lot of time and perhaps mental anguish at a task but not actually do the task. Writer's block is the classic example of this.

Sphexing

Sphexing is the act of carrying out a plan or behavior repeatedly despite it not working.

The Two Modes Model of Actually Trying

Actually Trying requires a combination of optimization power and effort, but each of those is done with a very different way of thinking, so it's helpful to do the two separately. In the first way of thinking, Optimizing Mode, you think hard about the problem you are trying to solve, develop a plan, look carefully at whether it's actually well-suited to solving the problem (as opposed to pretending to try) and perhaps Murphy-jitsu it. In Executing Mode, you carry out the plan.

Executing Mode breaks down when you reach an obstacle that you either don't know how to overcome or where the solution is something you don't want to do. In my personal experience, this is where things tend to get derailed. There are a few ways to respond to this situation:

• Return to Optimizing Mode to figure out how to overcome the obstacle / improve your plan (good),
• Ask for help / consult a relevant expert (good),
• Take a break, which could lead to a eureka moment, lead to Optimizing Mode or lead to derailing (ok),
• Sphex (bad),
• Derail / procrastinate (bad), or
• Punt / give up (ok if the obstacle is insurmountable).

The key is to respond constructively to obstacles. This usually means getting back to Optimizing Mode, either directly or after a break.  The failure modes here are derailing immediately, a "break" that turns into a derailment, and sphexing.  In our discussion, we shared a few techniques we had used to get back to Optimizing Mode.  These techniques tended to focus on some combination of removing the temptation to derail, providing a reminder to optimize, and changing mental state.

Getting Back to Optimizing Mode

Context switches are often helpful here.  Because for many people, work and procrastination both tend to be computer-based activities, it is both easy and tempting to switch to a time-wasting activity immediately upon hitting an obstacle.  Stepping away from the computer takes away the immediate distraction and depending on what you do away from the computer, helps you either think about the problem or change your mental state.  Depending on what sort of mood I'm in, I sometimes step away from the computer with a pen and paper to write down my thoughts (thinking about the problem), or I may step away to replenish my supply of water and/or caffeine (changing my mental state).  Other people in the discussion said they found going for a walk or getting more strenuous exercise to be helpful when they needed a break.  Strenuous exercise has the additional advantage of having very low risk of turning into a longer-than-intended break.

The danger with breaks is that they can turn into derailment.  Open-ended breaks ("I'll just browse Reddit for five minutes") have a tendency to expand, so it's best to avoid them in favor of things with more definite endings.  The other common say for breaks to turn into derailment is to return from a break and go to something non-productive.  I have had some success with attaching a sticky-note to my monitor reminding me what to do when I return to my computer.  I have also found that if the note makes clear what problem I need to solve also makes me less likely to sphex when I return to my computer.

In the week or so since the discussion that inspired this post, I have found that asking myself "what would Actually Trying look like right now?" This has helped me stay on track when I have encountered difficult problems at work.

Continuing my cursory exploration of semiotics and post-modern thought, I'm struck by the similarity between writing in those traditions, and picking up women.  The most-important traits for practitioners of both are energy, enthusiasm, and confidence.  In support of this proposition, here is a photo of Slavoj Zizek at his 2006 wedding:

Having philosophical or logical rigor, or demonstrating the usefulness of your ideas using empirical data, does not seem to provide a similar advantage, despite taking a lot of time.

I speculate that semiotics and post-modernism (which often go hand-in-hand) became popular by natural selection.  They provide specialized terminologies which give the impression of rigorous thought without requiring actual rigor. People who use them can thus out-publish their more-careful competitors. So post-modernism tends to drive rigorous thought out of any field it enters.

(It's possible to combine post-modern ideas and a time-consuming empirical approach, as Thomas Kuhn did in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  But it's uncommon.)

If rigorous thought significantly reduces publication rate, we should find that the rigor of a field or a person correlates inversely with words per person-year.  Establishing that fact alone, combined with the emphasis on publication in academics, would lead us to expect that any approach that allowed one to fake or dispense with intellectual rigor in a field would rapidly take over that field.

I spent an hour recently talking with a semiotics professor who was trying to explain semiotics to me.  He was very patient, and so was I, and at the end of an hour I concluded that semiotics is like Indian chakra-based medicine:  a set of heuristic practices that work well in a lot of situations, justified by complete bullshit.

I learned that semioticians, or at least this semiotician:

• believe that what they are doing is not philosophy, but a superset of mathematics and logic
• use an ontology, vocabulary, and arguments taken from medieval scholastics, including Scotus
• oppose the use of operational definitions
• believe in the reality of something like Platonic essences
• look down on logic, rationality, reductionism, the Enlightenment, and eliminative materialism.  He said that semiotics includes logic as a special, degenerate case, and that semiotics includes extra-logical, extra-computational reasoning.
• seems to believe people have an extra-computational ability to make correct judgements at better-than-random probability that have no logical basis
• claims materialism and reason each explain only a minority of the things they are supposed to explain
• claims to have a complete, exhaustive, final theory of how thinking and reasoning works, and of the categories of reality.

When I've read short, simple introductions to semiotics, they didn't say this.  They didn't say anything I could understand that wasn't trivial.  I still haven't found one meaningful claim made by semioticians, or one use for semiotics.  I don't need to read a 300-page tome to understand that the 'C' on a cold-water faucet signifies cold water.  The only example he gave me of its use is in constructing more-persuasive advertisements.

(Now I want to see an episode of Mad Men where they hire a semotician to sell cigarettes.)

Are there multiple "sciences" all using the name "semiotics"?  Does semiotics make any falsifiable claims?  Does it make any claims whose meanings can be uniquely determined and that were not claimed before semiotics?

His notion of "essence" is not the same as Plato's; tokens rather than types have essences, but they are distinct from their physical instantiation.  So it's a tripartite Platonism.  Semioticians take this division of reality into the physical instantiation, the objective type, and the subjective token, and argue that there are only 10 possible combinations of these things, which therefore provide a complete enumeration of the possible categories of concepts.  There was more to it than that, but I didn't follow all the distinctions. He had several different ways of saying "token, type, unbound variable", and seemed to think they were all different.

Really it all seemed like taking logic back to the middle ages.