Newest Submissions - Less Wrong Discussion

Problems with Academia and the Rising Sea

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:17:41 +0000

Submitted by JonahSinick • 6 votes • 0 comments

Severe problems with the biomedical research process

GiveWell has recently been investigating ways to improve biomedical research. When I discovered GiveWell's research was shocked by how severe and comprehensive the problems with the field seem to be:

From a conversation with Ferric Fang:

Because scientists have to compete for grants, they spend a very large fraction of their time fundraising, sometimes more than 50% of their working hours. Scientists feel [strong] pressure to optimize their activities for getting tenure and grants, rather than for doing good science.

From a conversation with Elizabeth Iorns:

Researchers are rewarded primarily for publishing papers in prestigious journals such as Nature, Science and Cell. These journals select for papers that report on surprising and unusual findings. Papers that report on unsound research that is apparently exciting are more likely to be published than papers which report on less exciting research that is sound.

There is little post-publication check on the soundness of papers’ findings, because journals, especially prestigious ones, generally don’t publish replications, and there is little funding for performing replications.

[…]

Pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer and Amgen have studied the frequency with which studies are reproducible by trying to reproduce them, and they have found that about 70% of published papers in the areas that they considered don’t reproduce.

[…]

Because many published results are not reproducible, it is difficult for scientists to use the published literature as a basis for deciding what experiments to perform.

[…]

As things stand, the pharmaceutical industry does replications, however, these are generally unpublished. Because a given lab doesn’t know whether other labs have found that a study fails to replicate, labs duplicate a lot of effort.

From a conversation with Ken Witwer:

Dr. Witwer published a study in Clinical Chemistry examining 127 papers that had been published in between July 2011 and April 2012 in journals that ostensibly require that researchers deposit their microarray data. He found that the data was not submitted for almost 60% of papers, and that data for 75% of papers were not in a format suitable for replication.

The above remarks give the impression that the problems are deeply entrenched and mutually reinforcing. On first glance, it seems that while one might be able to make incremental improvements (such as funding a journal that publishes replications), prospects for big improvements are very poor. But I became more hopeful after learning more.

The Rising Sea

The great mathematician Alexander Grothendieck wrote about two approaches to solving a difficult problem:

If you think of a theorem to be proved as a nut to be opened, so as to reach “the nourishing ﬂesh protected by the shell”, then the hammer and chisel principle is: “put the cutting edge of the chisel against the shell and strike hard. If needed, begin again at many diﬀerent points until the shell cracks—and you are satisﬁed”.

[…]

I can illustrate the second approach with the same image of a nut to be opened. The ﬁrst analogy that came to my mind is of immersing the nut in some softening liquid, and why not simply water? From time to time you rub so the liquid penetrates better, and otherwise you let time pass. The shell becomes more ﬂexible through weeks and months—when the time is ripe, hand pressure is enough, the shell opens like a perfectly ripened avocado!

A diﬀerent image came to me a few weeks ago. The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration … the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far oﬀ you hardly hear it …. yet it ﬁnally surrounds the resistant substance.

When a nut seems too hard to crack, it’s wise to think about the second method that Grothendieck describes.

Alternative Metrics

I was encouraged by GiveWell’s subsequent conversations, with David Jay and Jason Priem, which suggest a “rising sea” type solution to the cluster of apparently severe problems with biomedical research.

In brief, the idea is that it may be possible to create online communities and interfaces that can be used to generate measures of how valuable researchers find research outputs, and which could be used for funding and tenure decisions, thereby rewarding producing the research outputs that other researchers find most valuable. If incentives become aligned with producing valuable research, the whole system will shift accordingly, greatly reducing the existing inefficiencies.

From a conversation with Jason Priem

Historically, the academic community has filtered academic outputs for interest by peer review and, more specifically, the prestige of the journals where papers are published. This model is inadequate relative to filtering mechanisms that are now in principle possible using the Internet.

It is now possible to use the web to measure the quality and impact of an academic output via alternative metrics (altmetrics) such as

How many people downloaded it
How much it has been discussed on Twitter
How many websites link to it
The caliber of the scientists who have recommended it
How many people have saved it in a reference manager like Mendeley or Zotero

This is similar to how Google generates a list of webpages corresponding to a search term, since you can benefit from PageRank-type algorithms that foreground popular content in an intelligent fashion.

[…]

There’s been a significant amount of interest from funders and administrators in more nuanced and broader measures of researcher impact than their journal publication record. […] Algorithmically generated rankings of researchers’ influence as measured by the altmetrics mentioned previously could be an input into hiring, tenure, promotion, and grant decisions. ImpactStory and other providers of alternative metrics could help researchers’ aggregate their online impact so that they can present good summaries of it to administrators and funders.

From a conversation with David Jay

Commenting systems could potentially be used to create much more useful altmetrics. Such altmetrics could be generated for a scientific output by examining the nature of the comments that scientists make about it, weighting the comments using factors such as the number of upvotes that a comment receives and how distinguished the commenter is.

The metrics generated would be more informative than a journal publication record, because commenters give more specific feedback than the acceptance/rejection of a paper submitted to a given journal does.

[…]

If scientists were to routinely use online commenting systems to discuss scientific outputs, it seems likely that altmetrics generated from them would be strong enough for them to be used for hiring, promotion and grant-making decisions (in conjunction with, or in place of, the traditional metric of journal publication record).

[…]

David Jay envisages a future in which there is [...] A website which collects analytics from other websites so as to aggregate the impact of individual researchers, both for their own information and for use by hiring/promotion/grant committees.

The viability of this approach remains to be seen, but it could work really well, and illustrate a general principle.

About the author: I worked as a research analyst at GiveWell from April 2012 to May 2013. All views expressed here are my own.

0 comments

Random responses to surveys [reference request]

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:14:42 +0000

Submitted by JonahSinick • 1 votes • 2 comments

I'm looking for research on the frequency with which survey participants answer questions without reading them. I'd greatly appreciate any references.

2 comments

A Rational Financial Planning Overview

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:55:33 +0000

Submitted by Petruchio • 5 votes • 6 comments

The past few days have seen an increase of chatter concerning retirement and financial planning. One of us is even putting out a prospectus for a rational financial planning sequence. Some others have derided the concept of saving for retirement, as there is a probability of death before that time.

I am of the Extreme Early Retirement group. The idea is to save and invest 60-90% of your income, and you will have enough money to retire within a decade rather than four decades of the normal working career. This requires you to exercise your frugality muscle (such as cutting cable, biking to work, eating out less), but due to hedonistic adaptation, you will come out no less unhappy.

The sequences have already spoken on how spending money does not make us happier (after our basic needs are met). A Rationalist Financial plan should take this into account, even if a majority of people would not want to consider it.

I am just a beginner, so I linked the two big names in EEA, Mr. Money Mustache and Early Retirement Extreme. You can find their journeys towards financial independence here and here.

ERE is an austerity heavyweight, while MMM lives a pretty luxurious lifestyle, but still spends much less than his former coworkers. He just spends on what is important to him, such as travelling with his family and eating organic food, and not on anything frivolous, such as cable or eating out. He lives very far from a deprived lifestyle which the average person would shy away from. It takes a paradigm shift and some grit, but the people of LessWrong are not the type to reject munchkin ideas because it takes a little bit of mental effort.

If I were to make a compilation of posts for a Rational Financial Planning sequence, it will go as such…

How Little Money you need to Retire ?
Basic Retirement Math
Rationalist Spending
Maximizing Utilons per Dollar
Utilons Free Of Charge
Investing Rationally Basics

These are just the basics. Investment advice is scare, and the above does not talk about many fianacial aspects, such as insurance, children, career choice. The authors do speak about them on their blog’s, but I omitted them for brevity. Read and follow these posts however, and you will be better off than 90% of your peers, and well on the road to Extreme Early Retirement.

Petruchio

6 comments

[LINK] Does Time Exist? With Julian Barbour

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:38:57 +0000

Submitted by Benito • 0 votes • 2 comments

About six months ago, Julian Barbour did a introductory-level talk, attempting to explain the ideas in his book 'The End of Time'. The topic of his book, Yudkowsky has blogged about several times, but to the non-mathsy non-physicists, this talk might be a good introduction. It's very easygoing, and has also persuaded me to buy his book.

http://ww3.tvo.org/video/185595/julian-barbour-does-time-exist

If someone has already linked it, please say so.

Yudkowsky's related posts can mostly be found by typing 'Julian Barbour' in the search bar.

2 comments

[link] Are All Dictator Game Results Artifacts?

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:08:46 +0000

Submitted by Kaj_Sotala • 8 votes • 3 comments

http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2013/05/are-all-dictator-game-results-artifacts/

You walk into a laboratory, and you read a set of instructions that tell you that your task is to decide how much of a $10 pie you want to give to an anonymous other person who signed up for the experimental session.

This describes, more or less, the Dictator Game, a staple of behavioral economics with a history dating back more than a quarter of a century. The Dictator Game (DG) might not be the drosophila melanogaster of behavioral economics – the Prisoner’s Dilemma can lay plausible claim to that prized analogy – but it could reasonably aspire to an only slightly more modest title, perhaps the e. coli of the discipline. Since the original work, more than 20,000 observations in the DG have been reported.

[...]

How much would participants in a Dictator Game give to the other person if they did not know they were in a Dictator Game study? Simply following me around during the day and recording how much cash I dispense won’t answer this question because in the DG, the money is provided by the experimenter. So, to build a parallel design, the method used must move money to subjects as a windfall so that we can observe how much of this “house money” they choose to give away.

And that is what Winking and Mizer did in a paper now in press and available online (paywall) in Evolution and Human Behavior, using participants, fittingly enough, in Las Vegas. Here’s what they did. Two confederates were needed. The first, destined to become the “recipient,” was occupied on a phone call near a bus stop in Vegas. The second confederate approached lone individuals at the bus stop, indicated that they were late for a ride to the airport, and asked the subject if they wanted the $20 in casino chips still in the confederate’s possession, scamming people into, rather than out of money, in sharp contradiction of the deep traditions of Las Vegas. The question was how many chips the fortunate subject transferred to the nearby confederate.

[...]

In a second condition, the confederate with the chips added a comment to the effect that the subject could “split it with that guy however you want,” indicating the first confederate. This condition brings the study a bit closer, but not much closer, to lab conditions, In a third condition, subjects were asked if they wanted to participate in a study, and then did so along the lines of the usual DG, making the treatment considerably closer to traditional lab-based conditions.

The difference between the first two treatments and the third treatments is interesting, but, as I said at the beginning, the DG should be thought of as a measuring tool. Figure 1 shows how many chips people give away in the DG in the three treatments. In conditions 1 and 2, the number of people (out of 60) who gave at least one chip to the second confederate was… zero. To the extent you think that this method answers the question, how much Dictator Game giving is due to people knowing they’re in an experiment, the answer is, “all of it.”

Link to paper (paywalled).

3 comments

Preparing for a Rational Financial Planning Sequence

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:48:38 +0000

Submitted by elharo • 18 votes • 59 comments

What follows is a rough outline for a possible rational financial planning sequence that was inspired by some other recent discussion here. I'm not sure how useful this would be to how many people. I know there are some LessWrongers who would enjoy and learn from this; but I don't know if there are 5, 50, or 500. If you'd like to read it, let me know. If 500 people tell me they can't wait for this, I'll probably write it. If 5 people say maybe they'll glance at it, then probably not.

Part I: Preliminaries:

    Financial Rationality
    Multiplying uncertainties
    The inside and outside views
    Interpolation is reliable; extrapolation isn't

Part II: This is important:

Why to save for retirement
Dying alone in a hole: the story of Jane.
Why compound interest is cool
65-year old you will not want to live like a grad student
65-year old you will not want to work like 35-year old you
Existential risk does not defeat personal risk
Existential success does not defeat personal risk

Part III: Analyzing Your Life

    (This section needs a lot more fleshing out, and thought)

    Personal satisfaction and happiness: do what you love, and adjust your financial expectations accordingly
    How much do you need to retire?
    When do you want to retire?
    How much do you need to live on today?
    Big expenses you need to plan for
    Increasing Income
    College the best financial decision you'll ever make or the worst?
    Choosing a career: what is your comparative advantage?
    Switching careers
    Career Decisions
        equity vs salary; steady singles or home run hitter
        employee or owner
    Career Tactics
        Salary negotiation
        promotion
        when to change jobs
    Cutting Expenses
    Save more tomorrow
    Inheritance

Part IV: The Practical How-to Advice:

Emergency Cash
Credit cards: the good, the bad, and the criminal
Banking
Where to save (tax advantaged accounts)
The importance of fees
401K matching: the highest return you'll ever see
Social Security
Pensions
What to invest in (index funds)
    diversification
    stock vs bond funds
    domestic vs. international
    target retirement funds
    Comic books are not a retirement plan (but a comic book store might be)

Avoiding hucksters and doomsayers
Investment Advisors
What if the shit hits the fan?
Can smart, rational investors beat the market?
Good debt; bad debt
Cars and other expensive purchases
Cutting out the middleman: making money on Craig's list, amazon, eBay and AirB&B
Buying a house
Renting vs. owning a house; rental parity
Student loans
Health Insurance
Life Insurance
Auto Insurance
Your Spouse: the most important financial decision you'll ever make
    Diamonds are forever, but most women would rather have a house.
    One or two incomes?
    Live longer, be happier, get married

Children
Charity

If there are any topics you'd like to see covered that aren't here (wills? lawyers? the financial press?), let me know. Similarly, if you think there's a section that doesn't belong and should be dropped, let me know that too.

One caveat: while some sections are fairly generic, others will be very U.S. centric. The most specific advice will not be applicable to non-U.S. citizens and residents. That does limit the audience, but there's not too much I can do about that. Perhaps if it's successful I can seek out co-authors to do UK, Canadian, or other country editions.

A question for people who are interested in financial planning material: If this were available as a complete book (electronic and paper) today, how likely do you think it is that you would buy this book instead of one of the other available books on the subject? What would you pay for such a book? If this were available as both a book and a sequence on LessWrong, how might that change your decision?

For now, this discussion thread is just a minimum viable product (MVP) to find out if a sequence is worth the time it would take me to complete. If the MVP pans out, I'll write and post one or two of these chapters to further gauge interest. If the MVP doesn't look promising, I'll drop it and move on to my next book idea.

59 comments

Potential Impacts of Climate Change

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:22:20 +0000

Submitted by JonahSinick • 6 votes • 25 comments

According to a recent press release from UC Berkeley’s School of Law:

Overheated: The Human Cost of Climate Change predicts a grim future for billions of people in this century. It is a factual account of a staggering toll, based on hard data […] “Climate change is the most important problem facing the international community in the 21^st century,” Guzman said.

Guzman's view is shared by many.

While I have not read Guzman’s book, I have read GiveWell’s summary of the IPCC, as well as notes on GiveWell’s conversations with climate change experts. Based on these, I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that while climate change is an important issue, it’s unlikely to be the most important issue, though there is uncertainty, owing to poorly understood tail risk.

Potential Impacts according to the IPCC

GiveWell recently wrote up a summary and review of some of the impacts of unmitigated climate change, as described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. GiveWell writes:

The report suggests that unmitigated climate change would have extraordinarily negative humanitarian impacts across all of the outcomes we looked at: hunger, water stress, flooding, extreme weather, health, biodiversity, and the economy. Successfully mitigating these negative impacts would carry vast humanitarian benefits.

When looking at the range of possible futures outlined in the report, the bulk of the variation (in humanitarian terms) comes from variation in the level of assumed economic growth and adaptation, rather than variation in the amount of climate change. Of the outcomes we examined, only biodiversity is expected to be unambiguously worse off in the future as a result of both climate change and economic growth.

The most succinct summary of the expected impact is given by a GDP drop estimate:

Most recently, Stern (2007) took account of a full range of both impacts and possible outcomes. […] Using equity weights to reflect the expectation that a disproportionate share of the climate-change burden will fall on poor regions of the world increased their estimated reduction in equivalent consumption per head to 20%.

Such a drop would be highly undesirable, but far from catastrophic. World GDP has been growing at a rate of ~3%, so this corresponds only to a set-back of ~6 years. Poor countries are expected to become richer regardless, and because of marginal diminishing utility, such a setback would carry less negative humanitarian impact than such a setback would if it occurred today.

Overly weak assumptions regarding adaptation?

The IPCC considers what the impacts of climate change will be in 2050; a full 35 years away. My intuition is that over the course of the next 35 years, human society will adapt in such a way that the issues that the IPCC describes will have a smaller negative humanitarian impact than the IPCC suggests. I have not vetted the references given by the IPCC, and may be mistaken about their implicit assumptions, so my remarks should be taken with a grain of salt.

To explicitly address some of the impacts discussed in the IPCC:

Crop productivity and hunger in Africa — The IPCC projects that in 2050, at least 208 million people will be at risk of hunger even without climate change: only ~ 3x fewer than today. New technologies for the production of starch could make the number much smaller.
Floods due to rising sea levels — The IPCC mentions dikes and nourishment as possible adaptive responses, but doesn’t mention the possibility that people will move away from coastal areas as sea levels rise. Individual people and families might move away to avoid flooding. On the time scale of 5 years, people are usually unwilling to move, but over the course of 35 years, it might happen organically. Over time, more cities will be built, and people will migrate to them. Cities are more likely to be built in areas that are not prone to flooding, than in areas that are.
Significant loss of species and biodiversity — Over the next 35 years, humans may make a concerted effort to preserve rare species by collecting them and housing them in zoos. (I recognize that this would have to happen well before 35 years elapsed in order to avoid the loss.)

There are also more general relevant considerations:

Geoengineering — It may be possible to reverse or halt climate change via geoengineering. Geoengineering carries its own risks, but its potential would seem to be positive in expectation, although the situation is murky.
Unpredicted technologies — Technological progress is unpredictable, and it could be that we can develop technologies that mitigate effects such as droughts, even if we can’t see these technologies in advance. There are potential unpredicted technologies that would make climate change worse, such as those that facilitate cheaper extraction of fossil fuel, but on balance, technological progress usually enables humans to solve problems more than to create them.

Breakthroughs in genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and whole brain emulation could also radically alter human needs themselves.

The IPCC as overly optimistic?

Some people have voiced the concern that the IPCC is overly optimistic in its predictions of climate change impacts. This is corroborated by the recent paper Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama, which reports that historic IPCC predictions of current impacts of climate change have erred on the overcautious side. But given that the IPCC represents a consensus, barring tail risk, it seems unlikely that the IPCC is overly optimistic by a huge margin.

Tail risk

The biggest reason to be concerned about climate change is that there’s a small probability that the negative impact could be huge.

There is a danger of permafrost in the Arctic melting and releasing methane, creating a feedback loop where the release of methane, global warming, and the melting of the permafrost reinforce each other. This could increase global temperature by 3.5 degrees Celcius, greatly exacerbating all other impacts of climate change. Even if this doesn’t happen, it could be that climate models are wrong, and that the amount by which the earth temperature will rise is much greater than current models predict.

The potential impacts of a much larger increase in temperature than what the IPCC predicts are less studied. One starting point for reading on this is the 4degrees and beyond international climate conference.

About the author: I worked as a research analyst at GiveWell from April 2012 to May 2013. All views expressed here are my own.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Nick Beckstead, Vipul Naik and Carl Shulman for helpful suggestions.

To be continued: I'll be writing up a follow up report about the implications of the projected impacts for effective philanthropy.

25 comments

Meetup : Berkeley: To-do lists and other systems

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:09:51 +0000

Submitted by Nisan • 3 votes • 1 comment

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: To-do lists and other systems

WHEN: 22 May 2013 07:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: Berkeley, CA

Dear all, the topic of tomorrow's meetup is to-do lists, Getting Things Done, and other systems for managing time and tasks. I used to think of this as a mundane topic, but then I realized it's only as mundane as your goals are! I will be especially interested in learning about the systems or habits you employ, if you'd like to share.

The meetup will begin on Wednesday at 7:30pm. For directions to Zendo, see the mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group/bayarealesswrong

or call me at:

http://i.imgur.com/Vcafy.png

Discussion article for the meetup : Berkeley: To-do lists and other systems

1 comment

[LINK] Soylent crowdfunding

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:09:31 +0000

Submitted by Qiaochu_Yuan • 8 votes • 129 comments

Rob Rhinehart's food replacement Soylent now has a crowdfunding campaign.

Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health, and vastly reduces your environmental impact by eliminating much of the waste and harm coming from agriculture, livestock, and food-related trash.

If you're interested in one or more of these benefits, send in some money! There is also a new blog post.

129 comments

Meetup : Munich Meetup

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:31:34 +0000

Submitted by cadac • 1 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup

WHEN: 01 June 2013 03:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE: Café "Le copain", Gasteig, Rosenheimer Straße 5, 81667 Munich

The next meetup in Munich will be on Saturday, June 1st. At the last meetup, we decided that we would read the first three posts of the new Epistemology sequence until June, so we can try a more focused discussion the next time. Of course, if you haven’t read them, or if you are new to LessWrong, you are welcome, too. If you have any suggestions for discussion topics or activities, it would be great if you could post them as a comment here.

Discussion article for the meetup : Munich Meetup

0 comments

[LINK]s: Who says Watson is only a narrow AI?

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:04:12 +0000

Submitted by shminux • 4 votes • 26 comments

OK, so it covers only a few human occupations:

Trivia games (we all know about that one)
Clinical diagnosis
Banking advisor
and now a call center grunt

But the list is steadily growing.

Now, connect it with a self-driving AI, and your cab e-driver can make small talk, advise on a suspicious skin lesion, evaluate your investment portfolio and help you fix an issue with your smartphone, all while cheaply and efficiently getting you to your destination.

How long until it can evaluate verbal or written customer requirements and write better routine software than your average programmer?

26 comments

General intelligence test: no domains of stupidity

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:04:59 +0000

Submitted by Stuart_Armstrong • 6 votes • 16 comments

It's been a productive conversation on my post criticising the Turing test. I claimed that I wouldn't take the Turing test as definitive evidence of general intelligence if the agent was specifically optimised on the test. I was challenged as to whether I had a different definition of thinking than "able to pass the Turing test". As a consequence of that exchange, I think I do.

Truly general intelligence is impossible, because of various "no free lunch" theorems, that demonstrate that no algorithm can perform well in every environment (intuitively, this makes sense: a smarter being could always design an environment that specifically penalises a particular algorithm). Nevertheless, we have the intuitive definition of a general intelligence as one that performs well in most (or almost all) environments.

I'd like to reverse that definition, and define a general intelligence as one that doesn't perform stupidly in a novel environment. A small change of emphasis, but it gets to the heart of what the Turing test is meant to do, and why I questioned it. The idea of the Turing test is to catch the (putative) AGI performing stupidly. Since we can't test the AGI on every environment, the idea is to have the Turing test be as general as possible in potential. If you give me the questions in advance, I can certainly craft an algorithm that aces that test; similarly, you can construct an AGI that would ace any given Turing test. But since the space of reasonable conversations is combinatorially huge, and since the judge could potentially pick any element from within that, the AGI could not just have a narrow list of responses: it would have to be genuinely generally intelligent, so that it would not end up being stupid on the particular conversation it was in.

That's the theory, anyway. But maybe the space of conversations isn't as vast as all that, especially if the AGI has some simple classification algorithms. Maybe the data on the internet today, combined with some reasonably cunning algorithms, can carry a conversation as well as a human. After all, we are generating examples of conversations by the millions every hour of every day.

Which is why I emphasised testing from outside the domain of competence of the AGI. You need to introduce it to a novel environment, and give it the possibility of being stupid. If the space of human conversations isn't large enough, you need to move to the much larger space of real-world problem solving - and pick something from it. It doesn't matter what it is, simply that you have the potential of picking anything. Hence only a general intelligence could be confident, in advance, of coping with it. That's why I emphasised not saying what your test was going to be, and changing the rules or outright cheating: the less restrictions you allow on the potential test, the more informative the actual test is.

A related question, of course, is whether humans are generally intelligent. Well, humans are stupid in a lot of domains. Human groups augmented by data and computing technology, and given enough time, are much more generally intelligent that individual humans. So general intelligence is a matter of degree, not a binary classification (though it might be nearly binary for some AGI designs). Thus whether you call humans generally intelligent is a matter of taste and emphasis.

16 comments

Meetup : Fermi Estimates in Chicago

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:47:11 +0000

Submitted by Nic_Smith • 1 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : Fermi Estimates in Chicago

WHEN: 25 May 2013 03:00:59PM (-0500)

WHERE: 1 S Franklin, Chicago, IL

We'll be meeting at Argo Tea to discuss and practice Fermi estimates. When should they be used, and what considerations go into them? How many piano tuners ARE in Chicago?

Discussion article for the meetup : Fermi Estimates in Chicago

0 comments

High yield information sources for Software Development

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:59:10 +0000

Submitted by rationalnoob • 0 votes • 14 comments

Software developers have to repeatedly and continually learn massive number of new concepts, procedures and techniques related to the latest languages, frameworks and technologies up and down the stack.

The best way to learn would of course be to continuously read books in the spare time one isn't solving problems on the job and apply that knowledge.

I personally find reading books too time consuming for me. Books are presented in a depth first fashion, delving into multiple areas in depth one by one. This is not ideal for becoming productive quickly. There is no explicit ordering of how necessary / frequent a particular concept / technique is either.

What other sources of information / classes of sources are highest yield for picking up new technologies quickly [In the sense of getting productive fast].

An example of a high yield resources are well made slide decks. As an example, a slide deck on a language(e.g. javascript) made for experienced developers new to the language is much faster to process than a book. I can absorb the major features of the language, the syntax etc from a good slide deck in a fraction of the time it would take to read the introductory chapter of a book.

Any general comments (or specific sources) on how one would go about learning a new tech stack quickly would help too.

My current stack is linux, apache, python, django, dynamo, js, backbone

14 comments

[TED Talk] Peter Singer on Effective Altruism

Tue, 21 May 2013 04:06:28 +0000

Submitted by peter_hurford • 14 votes • 4 comments

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_singer_the_why_and_how_of_effective_altruism.html

If you're lucky enough to live without want, it's a natural impulse to be altruistic to others. But, asks philosopher Peter Singer, what's the most effective way to give? He talks through some surprising thought experiments to help you balance emotion and practicality -- and make the biggest impact with whatever you can share. Sometimes controversial, always practical ethicist Peter Singer stirs public debate about morality, from animal welfare to global poverty.

4 comments

Meetup : RTLW Meetup: Contra Dance!

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:56:59 +0000

Submitted by therufs • 5 votes • 7 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : RTLW Meetup: Contra Dance!

WHEN: 23 May 2013 06:50:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: 100 N Greensboro St, Carrboro NC 27510

In lieu of our regular coffee and discussion, this week's meetup will be held at the Century Center in Carrboro, where A GREAT DANCE will be taking place.

If you're a new dancer, there will be an intro lesson at 7 that will cover much of what you'll need to know. Try to arrive by about 6:50.

If you can't arrive in time for the lesson or find you are running late, please come dance anyway! Ruthan, David, Evan, or any other experienced dancer will be happy to help you.

You will need:
* $10 for admission
* Your dancing feet, in smooth-soled shoes, flat or low-heeled. (A few brave people do dance barefoot.)

You might also like to have:
* A water bottle
* An extra shirt or two if you're given to sweating profusely
* A twirly skirt
* A brace or wrap for any problematic joints (if only to signal to other dancers that they should make a point of being gentle)

The dance will run til 10:30, but staying the whole time isn't a requirement. Dancers often partake of potables and comestibles at a local establishment afterwards, though this will be subject to what's open late on a Thursday.

Requisite link to RTLW listserv: http://groups.google.com/group/rtlw Comment here or there if you're interested in a carpool!

Discussion article for the meetup : RTLW Meetup: Contra Dance!

7 comments

Meetup : Buffalo LW Thursday meetup

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:35:36 +0000

Submitted by StonesOnCanvas • 1 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : Buffalo LW Thursday meetup

WHEN: 23 May 2013 07:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: University at Buffalo- North Campus 31 Capen Hall

Buffalo-area Less Wrong meetups on the first Sunday and Third Thursday of every month, in 31 Capen Hall at the University at Buffalo - North Campus.

Hey all, We're going to be talking about inferential distance. We'll have a few articles to demonstrate the idea and how it effects arguments (and perhaps what you could do if you notice its happening to you). As always, don't worry if you haven't read the article, we'll either read it beforehand or give a short cliff notes version of it.

PS. James is doing a lot of the organizing for this one, so we should all give him major brownie points for it!

Discussion article for the meetup : Buffalo LW Thursday meetup

0 comments

Meetup : West LA Meetup - Probabilistic Graphical Models, Take 2!

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:39:29 +0000

Submitted by nickernst • 0 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Probabilistic Graphical Models, Take 2!

WHEN: 22 May 2013 07:00:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, May 22nd.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Lecture/Discussion: Graphs can make understanding causality very intuitive and easy. They are also a powerful tool for doing more complicated modeling. I will introduce PGMs as a concept, and show a few examples where they can be useful.

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible and useful to everyone who values thinking for themselves. There will be open general conversation until 7:30, and that's always a lot of good, fun, intelligent discussion!

I will bring a whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.

Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup - Probabilistic Graphical Models, Take 2!

0 comments

Terminology suggestion: Say "degrees utility" instead of "utils" to prompt affine thinking

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:03:05 +0000

Submitted by Sniffnoy • 10 votes • 39 comments

A common mistake people make with utility functions is taking individual utility numbers as meaningful, and performing operations such as adding them or doubling them. But utility functions are only defined up to positive affine transformation.

Talking about "utils" seems like it would encourage this sort of mistake; it makes it sound like some sort of quantity of stuff, that can be meaningfully added, scaled, etc. Now the use of a unit -- "utils" -- instead of bare real numbers does remind us that the scale we've picked is arbitrary, but it doesn't remind us that the zero we've picked is also arbitrary, and encourages such illegal operations as addition and scaling. It suggests linear, not affine.

But there is a common everyday quantity which we ordinarily measure with an affine scale, and that's temperature. Now, in fact, temperatures really do have an absolute zero (and if you make sufficient use natural units, they have an absolute scale, as well), but generally we measure temperature with scales that were invented before that fact was recognized. And so while we may have Kelvins, we have "degrees Fahrenheit" or "degrees Celsius".

If you've used these scales long enough you recognize that it is meaningless to e.g. add things measured on these scales, or to multiply them by scalars. So I think it would be a helpful cognitive reminder to say something like "degrees utility" instead of "utils", to suggest an affine scale like we use for temperature, rather than a linear scale like we use for length or time or mass.

The analogy isn't entirely perfect, because as I've mentioned above, temperature actually can be measured on a linear scale (and with sufficient use of natural units, an absolute scale); but the point is just to prompt the right style of thinking, and in everyday life we usually think of temperature as an (ordered) affine thing, like utility.

As such I recommend saying "degrees utility" instead of "utils". If there is some other familiar quantity we also tend to use an affine scale for, perhaps an analogy with that could be used instead or as well.

39 comments

[LINK] Evidence-based giving by Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:47:43 +0000

Submitted by brilee • 3 votes • 9 comments

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323372504578466992305986654.html

Apparently a hedge fundie made 4 billion and is giving most of it away to what the WSJ describes as a "moneyball" approach to giving.

9 comments

[Paper] On the 'Simulation Argument' and Selective Scepticism

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:31:10 +0000

Submitted by benthamite • 12 votes • 53 comments

Jonathan Birch recently published an interesting critique of Bostrom's simulation argument. Here's the abstract:

Nick Bostrom’s ‘Simulation Argument’ purports to show that, unless we are confident that advanced ‘posthuman’ civilizations are either extremely rare or extremely rarely interested in running simulations of their own ancestors, we should assign significant credence to the hypothesis that we are simulated. I argue that Bostrom does not succeed in grounding this constraint on credence. I first show that the Simulation Argument requires a curious form of selective scepticism, for it presupposes that we possess good evidence for claims about the physical limits of computation and yet lack good evidence for claims about our own physical constitution. I then show that two ways of modifying the argument so as to remove the need for this presupposition fail to preserve the original conclusion. Finally, I argue that, while there are unusual circumstances in which Bostrom’s selective scepticism might be reasonable, we do not currently find ourselves in such circumstances. There is no good reason to uphold the selective scepticism the Simulation Argument presupposes. There is thus no good reason to believe its conclusion.

The paper is behind a paywall, but I have uploaded it to my shared Dropbox folder, here.

EDIT: I emailed the author and am glad to see that he's decided to participate in the discussion below.

53 comments

LINK: Google research chief: 'Emergent artificial intelligence? Hogwash!'

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:45:45 +0000

Submitted by shminux • 7 votes • 44 comments

The Register talks to Google's Alfred Spector:

Google's approach toward artificial intelligence embodies a new way of designing and running complex systems. Rather than create a monolithic entity with its own modules for reasoning about certain inputs and developing hypotheses that let it bootstrap its own intelligence into higher and higher abstractions away from base inputs, as other AI researchers did through much of the 60s and 70s, Google has instead taken a modular approach.

"We have the knowledge graph, [the] ability to parse natural language, neural network tech [and] enormous opportunities to gain feedback from users," Spector said in an earlier speech at Google IO. "If we combine all these things together with humans in the loop continually providing feedback our systems become ... intelligent."

Spector calls this his "combination hypothesis", and though Google is not there yet – SkyNet does not exist – you can see the first green buds of systems that have the appearance of independent intelligence via some of the company's user-predictive technologies such as Google Now, the new Maps and, of course, the way it filters search results according to individual identity.

(Emphasis mine.) I don't have a transcript, but there are videos online. Spector is clearly smart, and apparently he expects an AI to appear in a completely different way than Eliezer does. And he has all the resources and financing he wants, probably 3-4 orders of magnitude over MIRI's. His approach, if workable, also appears safe: it requires human feedback in the loop. What do you guys think?

44 comments

Meetup : [Cambridge] Sunk Cost Kata

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:57:27 +0000

Submitted by ModusPonies • 2 votes • 5 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : [Cambridge] Sunk Cost Kata

WHEN: 19 May 2013 02:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: 21 Ames St, Cambridge, MA

We'll present the Center for Applied Rationality's material on sunk costs and go over their exercises on how to apply this knowledge in daily life.

Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups are on the first and third Sunday of every month at 2pm in the MIT Whitaker Building (21 Ames St, Bldg 56), room 180. Room number subject to change based on availability. Signs will be posted with the actual room number. The side doors are sometimes locked; if so, you can get in through the main door at 25 Ames St.

Discussion article for the meetup : [Cambridge] Sunk Cost Kata

5 comments

Meetup : First Bristol meetup

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:52:53 +0000

Submitted by Benja • 3 votes • 10 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : First Bristol meetup

WHEN: 25 May 2013 03:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE: Friska Queens Road (on the Clifton triangle), Bristol

Back in 2010, Bristol had 4000+ unique LW visitors, but we've never had a meetup -- let's try and see what happens! I'll be in the Friska on Queens Road (on the Clifton triangle, right next to the university campus) on Saturday the 25th at 3pm, with a LessWrong sign and a paperback of HPMOR. Anyone going to join me? :-)

Discussion article for the meetup : First Bristol meetup

10 comments

Education control?

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:32:55 +0000

Submitted by PhilGoetz • 11 votes • 35 comments

I'm reading Nurture Shock by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman. Several things in the book, esp. the chapter on "Tools of the Mind", an intriguing education program, suggest that our education of young children not only isn't very good even when evaluated using tests that the curriculum was designed for, it's worse than just letting kids play. (My analogy and interpretation—don't blame this on the Tools people—is that conventional education may be like a Soviet five-year plan, trying to force children to acquire skills & knowledge that they would have been motivated to learn on their own if there weren't a school, and that early education shouldn't focus entirely on teaching specific facts, but also on teaching how to think, form abstractions, and control impulses.)

Say they're going to play fireman. The Tools teacher teaches the kids about what firemen do and what happens in a fire, and gives the kids different roles to play, then lets them play. They teach facts not because the facts are important, but to make the play session longer and more complicated. Tools does well in increasing test scores, but even better at reducing disruptive behavior. [1]

Tools has a variety of computer games that are designed to get kids to exercise particular cognitive skills, like focusing on something while being aware of background events. But the games often sound like more-boring ways of teaching kids the same things that video-games teach them.

Tools did no better than the existing curriculum on certain metrics in a recent larger study. But it didn't perform worse, either.

The first study you do with any biological intervention is to compare the intervention to a control group that has no intervention. But in education, AFAIK no one has ever done this. Everyone uses the existing curriculum as the control.

Whatever country you're in, what metrics do you use, and what evidence do you have that your schools are better than nothing at all?

There may be some things that you need to sit kids down and force them to learn—say, arithmetic, math, and typing—but I kinda doubt it's more than 20% of the grade school curriculum. I spent a lot of time practicing penmanship, futilely trying to memorizing the capitals and chief exports of all fifty states, and studying the history of Thanksgiving and the American Revolution over and over again.[2] We could have a short-hours classroom hours control group, where kids spend a few hours a day learning those few facts they need to know, and the rest of the time playing.

[1] I fear somebody is going to complain that disruptive behavior is what we need to teach children so they can innovate and question authority. Open to discussion, but if it worked that way, we'd be overwhelmed with innovators and independent thinkers today.

[2] I actually learned the names of all the states from a song, and learned where they are from a jigsaw puzzle.

35 comments

Morality should be Moral

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:26:03 +0000

Submitted by OrphanWilde • 9 votes • 51 comments

This article is just some major questions concerning morality, then broken up into sub-questions to try to assist somebody in answering the major question; it's not a criticism of any morality in particular, but rather what I hope is a useful way to consider any moral system, and hopefully to help people challenge their own assumptions about their own moral systems. I don't expect responses to try to answer these questions; indeed, I'd prefer you don't. My preferred responses would be changes, additions, clarifications, or challenges to the questions or to the objective of this article.

First major question: Could you morally advocate other people adopt your moral system?

This isn't as trivial a question as it seems on its face. Take a strawman hedonism, for a very simple example. Is a hedonist's pleasure maximized by encouraging other people to pursue -their- pleasure? Or would it be better served by convincing them to pursue other people's (a class of people of which our strawman hedonist is a member) pleasure?

It's not merely selfish moralities which suffer meta-moral problems. I've encountered a few near-Comtean altruists who will readily admit their morality makes them miserable; the idea that other people are worse off than them fills them with a deep guilt which they cannot resolve. If their goal is truly the happiness of others, spreading their moral system is a short-term evil. (It may be a long-term good, depending on how they do their accounting, but non-moral altruism isn't actually a rare quality, so I think an honest accounting would suggest their moral system doesn't add much additional altruism to the system, only a lot of guilt about the fact that not much altruistic action is taking place.)

Note: I use the word "altruism" here in its modern, non-Comtean sense. Altruism is that which benefits others.

Does your moral system make you unhappy, on the whole? Does it, like most moral systems, place a value on happiness? Would it make the average person less or more happy, if they and they alone adopted it? Are your expectations of the moral value of your moral system predicated on an unrealistic scenario of universal acceptance? Maybe your moral system isn't itself very moral.

Second: Do you think your moral system makes you a more moral person?

Does your moral system promote moral actions? What percentage of your actions concerning your morality are spent feeling good because you feel like you've effectively promoted your moral system, rather than promoting the values inherent in it?

Do you behave any differently than you would if you operated under a "common law" morality, such as social norms and laws? That is, does your ethical system make you behave differently than if you didn't possess it? Are you evaluating the merits of your moral system solely on how it answers hypothetical situations, rather than how it addresses your day-to-day life?

Does your moral system promote behaviors you're uncomfortable with and/or could not actually do, such as pushing people in the way of trolleys to save more people?

Third: Does your moral system promote morality, or itself as a moral system?

Is the primary contribution of your moral system to your life adding outrage that other people -don't- follow your moral system? Do you feel that people who follow other moral systems are immoral even if they end up behaving in exactly the same way you do? Does your moral system imply complex calculations which aren't actually taking place? Is the primary purpose of your moral system encouraging moral behavior, or defining what the moral behavior would have been after the fact?

Considered as a meme or memeplex, does your moral system seem better suited to propagating itself than to encouraging morality? Do you think "The primary purpose of this moral system is ensuring that these morals continue to exist" could be an accurate description of your moral system? Does the moral system promote the belief that people who don't follow it are completely immoral?

Fourth: Is the major purpose of your morality morality itself?

This is a rather tough question to elaborate with further questions, so I suppose I should try to clarify a bit first: Take a strawman utilitarianism where "utility" -really is- what the morality is all about, where somebody has painstakingly gone through and assigned utility points to various things (this is kind of common in game-based moral systems, where you're just accumulating some kind of moral points, positive or negative). Or imagine (tough, I know) a religious morality where the sole objective of the moral system is satisfying God's will. That is, does your moral system define morality to be about something abstract and immeasurable, defined only in the context of your moral system? Is your moral system a tautology, which must be accepted to even be meaningful?

This one can be difficult to identify from the inside, because to some extent -all- human morality is tautological; you have to identify it with respect to other moralities, to see if it's a unique island of tautology, or whether it applies to human moral concerns in the general case. With that in mind, when you argue with other people about your ethical system, do they -always- seem to miss the point? Do they keep trying to reframe moral questions in terms of other moral systems? Do they bring up things which have nothing to do with (your) morality?

51 comments

Weekly LW Meetups: Atlanta, Austin, Moscow, Ottawa, Vancouver

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:53:14 +0000

Submitted by FrankAdamek • 0 votes • 0 comments

This summary was posted to LW main on May 10th. The following week's summary is here.

There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:

The following meetups take place in cities with regularly scheduled meetups, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:

Locations with regularly scheduled meetups: Austin, Berkeley, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge UK, Madison WI, Melbourne, Mountain View, New York, Ohio, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vienna, Waterloo, and West Los Angeles. There's also a 24/7 online study hall for coworking LWers.

If you'd like to talk with other LW-ers face to face, and there is no meetup in your area, consider starting your own meetup; it's easy (more resources here). Check one out, stretch your rationality skills, build community, and have fun!

If you missed the deadline and wish to have your meetup featured, you can reach me on gmail at frank dot c dot adamek.

In addition to the handy sidebar of upcoming meetups, a meetup overview will continue to be posted on the front page every Friday. These will be an attempt to collect information on all the meetups happening in the next weeks. The best way to get your meetup featured is still to use the Add New Meetup feature, but you'll now also have the benefit of having your meetup mentioned in a weekly overview. These overview posts will be moved to the discussion section when the new post goes up.

Please note that for your meetup to appear in the weekly meetups feature, you need to post your meetup before the Friday before your meetup!

If you check Less Wrong irregularly, consider subscribing to one or more city-specific mailing list in order to be notified when an irregular meetup is happening: Atlanta, Berlin, Chicago, Helsinki, London, Marin CA, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Southern California (Los Angeles/Orange County area), St. Louis, Vancouver, Washington, DC.

Whether or not there's currently a meetup in your area, you can sign up to be notified automatically of any future meetups. And if you're not interested in notifications you can still enter your approximate location, which will let meetup-starting heroes know that there's an interested LW population in their city!

If your meetup has a mailing list that you'd like mentioned here, or has become regular and isn't listed as such, let me know!

Want to help out the common good? If one of the meetups listed as regular has become inactive, let me know so we can present more accurate information to newcomers.

0 comments

Open thread, May 17-31 2013

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:47:27 +0000

Submitted by PhilipL • 2 votes • 220 comments

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

220 comments

The Unselfish Trolley Problem

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:51:56 +0000

Submitted by elharo • 5 votes • 130 comments

By now the Trolley Problem is well known amongst moral philosophers and LessWrong readers. In brief, there's a trolley hurtling down the tracks. The dastardly villain Snidely Whiplash has tied five people to the tracks. You have only seconds to act. You can save the five people by throwing a switch and transferring the trolley to another track. However the evil villain has tied a sixth person to the alternate track. Should you throw the switch?

When first presented with this problem, almost everyone answers yes. Sacrifice the one to save five. It's not a very hard choice.

Now comes the hard question. There is no switch or alternate track. The trolley is still coming down the tracks, and there are still five people tied to it. You are instead standing on a bridge over the tracks. Next to you is a fat man. If you push the man onto the tracks, the trolley car will hit him and derail, saving the five people; but the fat man will die. Do you push him?

This is a really hard problem. Most people say no, they don't push. But really what is the difference here? In both scenarios you are choosing to take one life in order to save five. It's a net gain of four lives. Especially if you call yourself a utilitarian, as many folks here do, how can you not push? If you do push, how will you feel about that choice afterwards?

Try not to Kobayashi Maru this question, at least not yet. I know you can criticize the scenario and find it unrealistic. For instance, you may say you won't push because the man might fight back, and you'd both fall but not till after the trolley had passed so everyone dies. So imagine the fat man in a wheelchair, so he can be lightly rolled off the bridge. And if you're too socially constrained to consider hurting a handicapped person, maybe the five people tied to the tracks are also in wheelchairs. If you think that being pushed off a bridge is more terrifying than being hit by a train, suppose the fat man is thoroughly anesthetized. Yes, this is an unrealistic thought experiment; but please play along for now.

Have your answer? Good. Now comes the third, final, and hardest question; especially for anybody who said they'd push the fat man. There is still no switch or alternate track. The trolley is still coming down the tracks, and there are still five people tied to it. You are still standing on a bridge over the tracks. But this time you're alone and the only way to stop the train is by jumping in front of it yourself. Do you jump? If you said yes, you would push the fat man; but you won't jump. Why?

Do you have a moral obligation to jump in front of the train? If you have a moral obligation to push someone else, don't you have a moral obligation to sacrifice yourself as well? or if you won't sacrifice yourself, how can you justify sacrificing someone else? Is it morally more right to push someone else than jump yourself? I'd argue the opposite...

Realistically you may not be able to bring yourself to jump. It's not exactly a moral decision. You're just not that brave. You accept that it's right for you to jump, and accept that you're not that moral. Fine. Now imagine someone is standing next to you, a skinny athletic person who's too small to stop the train themselves but strong enough to push you over into the path of the trolley. Do you still think the correct answer to the trolley problem is to push?

If we take it seriously, this is a hard problem. The best answer I know is Rawlsianism. You pick your answer in ignorance of who you'll be in the problem. You don't know whether you're the pusher, the pushed, or one of the people tied to the tracks. In this case, the answer is easy: push! There's a 6/7 chance you'll survive so the selfish and utilitarian answers converge.

We can play other variants. For instance, suppose Snidely kidnaps you and says "Tomorrow I'm going to flip a coin. Heads I'll put you on the tracks with 4 other people (and put a different person on the bridge next to the pusher). Tails I'll put you on the bridge next to a pusher." Should the pusher push? Actually that's an easy one because you don't know where you'll end up so you might as well save the four extra people in both scenarios. Your expected value is the same and everyone else's is increased by pushing.

Now imagine Snidely says instead he'll roll a die. If it comes up 1-5, he puts six people including you on the track. If it comes up 6, he lets you go and puts the other five people on the track. However if you agree to be tied to the track without a roll, without even a chance of escape, he'll let the other five people go. What now? Suppose he rolls two dice and they both have to come up 6 for you to go free; but he'll still let everyone else go if you agree. Will you save the other five people at the cost of a 1/36 chance of saving your own life? How about three dice? four? How many dice must Snidely roll before you think the chance of saving your own life is outweighed by the certainty of saving five others?

Do you have your answers? Are you prepared to defend them? Good. Comment away, and you can even Kobayashi Maru the scenario or criticize the excessively contrived hypotheticals I've posed here. But be forewarned, in part 2 I'm going to show you an actual, non-hypothetical scenario where this problem becomes very real; indeed a situation I know many LessWrong readers are facing right now; and yes, it's a matter of life and death.

Update: It now occurs to me that the scenario can be tightened up considerably. Forget the bridge and the fat man. They're irrelevant details. Case 1 is as before. 5 people on one track, 1 on another. Pull the switch to save the 5 and kill the 1. Still not a hard problem.

Case 2: same as before, except this time you are standing next to the one person tied to the track who will be hit by the trolley if you throw the switch. And they are conscious, can talk to you, and see what you're doing. No one else will know what you did. Does this change your answer, and if so why?

Case 3: same as before, except this time you are the one person tied to the track who will be hit by the trolley if you throw the switch.

Folks here are being refreshingly honest. I don't think anyone has yet said they would throw the switch in case 3, and most of us (myself included) are simply admitting we're not that brave/altruistic/suicidal (assuming the five people on the other track are not our friends or family). So let's make it a little easier. Suppose in case 3 someone else, not you, is tied to the track but can reach the switch. What now?

Update 2: Case 4: As in case 3, you are tied to the track, five other unrelated people are tied to the opposite track, and you have access to a switch that will cause the trolley to change tracks. However now the trolley is initially aimed at you. The five people on the other track are safe unless you throw the switch. Is there a difference between throwing the switch in this case, and not throwing the switch in Case 3?

This case also raises the interesting question of legality. If there are any lawyers in the room, do you think a person who throws the switch in case 4--that is, saves themselves at the cost of five other lives--could be convicted of a crime? (Of course, the answer to this one may vary with jurisdiction.) Are there any actual precedents of cases like this?

130 comments

10-Step Anti-Procrastination Checklist

Fri, 17 May 2013 01:59:51 +0000

Submitted by JesseGalef • 25 votes • 34 comments

Despite recent strides in my productivity habits, I still catch myself procrastinating at work more often than I'd like. It's not that I make a conscious decision to put off a project; it just feels as though I wake up 20 minutes later and realize that nothing got accomplished. (Or, to avoid the passive voice and take much-deserved responsibility, I "realize that I haven't accomplished anything".)

I've been looking for techniques to improve, and got a lot out of LukeProg's articles on How to Beat Procrastination and My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination, based on Piers Steel's The Procrastination Equation.

But I also wanted a way to put the principles to use with the lowest activation cost possible. I can't expect unmotivated future-me to be too cooperative; I need to provide him with an easy path to get in flow.

So! I developed a 10-Step Productivity Checklist, pulling the concepts from Luke's articles and adding a couple points that are important for me. Now whenever I notice myself being unproductive I have a much easier time following the steps one by one until I get back in a good mindset to work.

Productivity Checklist:

What is the task? Make sure you're going to focus on one thing at a time.
Do you have something to drink? Get yourself some tea, coffee, or water.
Are distractions closed? Shut the door, quit Tweetdeck, close the Facebook and Gmail tabs, and set skype to "Do not disturb."
What music will you listen to inspire yourself to be productive or get in flow? Put on a good instrumental playlist! (I love video game soundtracks, further notes in comments.)
Why are you doing this task? Trace the value until you feel the benefit.
What are the parts to this task? Break things down as much as you can, until they're physical actions if possible.
What are some ways to gamify the task? Try to have fun with it!
What are some rewards you can offer yourself for completing sections of the task? Smiling, throwing your arms up in the air and proclaiming victory, or M&M's all count.
What's an achievable goal for this sitting? Set a reasonable expectation for yourself.
How long will you work until you take a break? Set a timer and commit to focusing.

Get into flow!

I'd love to hear from you:

Whether these are useful
Any ideas for good ways to enact these steps
Steps that should be added/removed/tweaked
Whether there are other posts/resources that you've found valuable

I hope this helps you as much as it's helping me, and that together we can make it even better!

34 comments

Meetup : Tel Aviv, Israel Meetup - Goal Clarification with special guest Cat from CFAR

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:04:31 +0000

Submitted by SoftFlare • 6 votes • 10 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv, Israel Meetup - Goal Clarification with special guest Cat from CFAR

WHEN: 23 May 2013 07:00:00PM (+0300)

WHERE: TBA, In central Tel Aviv

For the first time in something like forever there will be a rationality meetup in Tel Aviv, Israel. It'll be a great chance to meet your fellow LWers from Israel.

We will be joined by very special guest Cat from CFAR who will talk about Goal Clarification - a useful technique for increasing productivity.

Please email me @ hochbergg@gmail.com about your RSVP.

If you are a LWer from Israel who'd would have liked to come, but can't due to scheduling constraints, please email me as well so we can stay in touch :)

Gal Hochberg

Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv, Israel Meetup - Goal Clarification with special guest Cat from CFAR

10 comments

Meetup : London Meetup - 26th May

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:51:46 +0000

Submitted by sixes_and_sevens • 3 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : London Meetup: 26th May

WHEN: 26 May 2013 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE: Holborn, London, WC2B 6BG

One of our fortnightly meetups. This will be held in the Shakespeare's Head by Holborn tube station. Turn left out of the station exit, and it's <100m on your left.

We're in the process of changing the format of meetups, so they alternate between designated "social" and "practical" gatherings. This will be the last undesignated meetup.

One of our number will have recently returned from the May CFAR Rationality Minicamp, and has volunteered to provide an AMA-style discussion on the experience.

We have a Google Group. Why not join it?

Discussion article for the meetup : London Meetup: 26th May

0 comments

Meetup : Bielefeld Meetup May 22nd

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:50:19 +0000

Submitted by Just_existing • 0 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : Bielefeld Meetup May 22nd

WHEN: 22 May 2013 07:00:00PM (+0200)

WHERE: Grill/Bar Verve, Klosterplatz 13, Bielefeld

We are meeting once again in Bielefeld.

The topics of this evening are not yet determined, but will be in the next days, or develop during the meetup. Highly interesting talk can be expected.

If you live in the area consider dropping by :)

Discussion article for the meetup : Bielefeld Meetup May 22nd

0 comments

Meetup : [Moscow] Belief cleaning

Thu, 16 May 2013 06:09:03 +0000

Submitted by Yuu • 0 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : [Moscow] Belief cleaning

WHEN: 26 May 2013 04:00:00PM (+0400)

WHERE: Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16

Please use the following guide to get to the meetup: link. You need the second revolving door with the sign “Yandex Money” in Russian. We will meet you at 15:45 MSK with “LW” sign. And we will also check the entrance at 16:00 and 16:10, so please do not be late.

Main topics:

Epistemic Spring Cleaning: we will do exercise to find and change old unnecessary beliefs.
Prediction markets. We will have another round of predictions, you can find the discussion and bets table on the Russian forum.
Game session: the Resistance. You can find rules here, in Russian.

If you are going for the first time, you can fill this one minute form (in Russian), to share your contact information. You can also use personal messages here, or drop a message at lw@lesswrong.ru to contact me for any reason.

Reports from previous sessions can be found here, in Russian, now with photos

Discussion article for the meetup : [Moscow] Belief cleaning

0 comments

Meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 65-68

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:27:12 +0000

Submitted by therufs • 0 votes • 0 comments

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 65-68

WHEN: 18 May 2013 12:30:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: 726 Rigsbee Avenue, Durham NC 27701

Meet at Fullsteam (address above) for discussion of HPMoR chapters 65-68!

We may be recognizeable by our large spiral-bound tome, but the likely absence of other groups will probably make us easy to spot.

Bring coffee and/or food as you are inclined; tell the list if you'd like a ride: http://groups.google.com/group/rtlw

See you there!

Discussion article for the meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 65-68

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Group Rationality Diary, May 16-31

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:12:36 +0000

Submitted by therufs • 4 votes • 12 comments

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for May 16-31.

It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit

Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief

Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations

Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior

Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something

Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life

Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you

Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating!

Immediate past diary

Rationality Diaries archive

12 comments

Why is it rational to invest in retirement? I don't get it.

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:28:42 +0000

Submitted by diegocaleiro • 19 votes • 111 comments

I know I said I'd be gone... but this was just a comment originally, and I noticed it may actually be relevant.

Elharo said in Munchkin Ideas:

Put as much money as you can afford into tax advantaged retirement accounts. In the U.S. that means 401K, 403b, IRA, SEP, etc.

I'm interested in the following:

Why should people invest in retirement? Or, instead, why should someone invest as much as most do in retirement.

Few facts that make it a boggling question for me:

You are 10% to 20% likely to die before you enjoy even your first retirement year.

People adjust much more to harsh economical conditions than they believe they would. They remain happy, as many studies by Seligman and others show.

People who retire are only happier as retirees if they retired by choice (I lost the paper, sorry).

Most people here live in rich countries - darn, hate to be the exception! - , and their state would happily provide them with at least the maximal retirement plan legal in my country (aprox 2000 dollars/month). And surely would provide them with double the minimal (about 200/month) if they needed.

If you have descendants, they may support you in case you are still alive, and if you are not rich enough to keep a house, you have a good excuse to be in company of loved ones (you have nowhere else to go).

Last, but not least: That person is not even you that much anyway.

Given all that, I have no clue what the whole fuss about retirement plans, and being 60% of a rich old person with a crappy body is all about, specially if you are in the grave.

I mean, in the cryopreservation chamber, of course.

Edit: A related question not worth its own post, but maybe worth discussing, is Should inheritance "jump" a generation. Everyone inheriting from grandparents, instead of parents? Just the abstract ethical question. Regardless of implementation procedure.

111 comments

[LINK] Prizes and open source for drug research (proposed, and some politics)

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:23:32 +0000

Submitted by NancyLebovitz • 6 votes • 14 comments

Trying to get drug research to happen in spite of the drug companies:

The article also has rather a lot about US government opposition to the proposed treaty, which includes a requirement that member nations spend 0.01% of GDP annually on neglected diseases, and Bill Gates' opposition as well.

Is there any reason why non-profits aren't doing drug research?

Love's idea suggests the use of cash prizes -- rather than patents -- to incentivize research; say, $2 billion for an effective therapeutic drug for Chagas disease. A cure, once developed, proven, and awarded a prize, would then exist as open-access intellectual property, with manufacturers around the world competing to produce the drug in the most cost effective manner. Implementing the idea, Love said, "is effectively leveraging the power of the free market twice, once to produce the thing you want and then again to manufacture it as economically as possible." The concept is known as delinking.

*****

To combat the problem [of isolated research groups], the R&D treaty would create an observatory, an open platform for researchers in disparate corners of the globe to pool data and coordinate their work. Grants given to fund their studies would come with provisions requiring that the research exist on that public, cloud-based observatory.

*****

Love's concept of delinking is outlined in a proposal for an R&D treaty, which remains in limbo at the WHO in Geneva. It will have its fate decided in late May, at the annual World Health Assembly (WHA), the democratic forum of members states that governs the WHO.

*****

Scannell worked as a consultant in the drug industry and then as an equity analyst, but quit last year to team up with Young once more at small biotech firm Scannell described as "heretical." The company is called e-Therapeutics, and its approaching drug design via the pair's background in networks. "Go back to how the drug industry says it discovers drugs. It looks for individual targets and then it optimizes drugs for high affinity binding on that target," Scannell said. The strategy, to Scannell's and Young's eyes, fails to take into account the complexity of biological systems.

"If you look at the structure of protein-protein interaction networks in cells, or the metabolic networks, these have been designed by evolution to be robust. You've got feedback loops, you've got parallel pathways, you've got redundancies. And what that says is, if you start your search process looking for an individual molecular component you want to perturb to influence a disease, probably evolution has designed your cell that, if you perturb that component, nothing is going to happen." Given the approach, Scannell said, "Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that 95 percent of drugs going into clinical trials fail."

"Historically, you can make a very strong case that the way drugs were discovered when it was cheap and easy -- you can't do all this now because of the regulators, but some of this you might be able to do -- was essentially through broad phenotypic screening, very often in man," Scannell said. "Drugs were regarded as potential tools that might do something useful, and then people essentially searched for uses for the tool. And today we do the exact opposite. Which is we say, we want something that cures Alzheimer's disease, let's design something that cures Alzheimer's disease, and frankly that just doesn't work."

*****

"He [Bill Gates] slowly, as Foundation and as a philanthropist, is being drawn into more open-source policies," Love said. "If you look at the licensing he does on his own government-funded research, he has experienced a little bit of frustration when he doesn't get sufficient openness in the research he's funded himself, so he's begin to put things that much very much like open-source provisions in his own licenses," Love said. "That has been progress, and people have noticed that. It used to be that if you applied to the program to fund libraries -- I know somebody that did this -- she was told you had to eliminate the words 'open-source' because they couldn't fund anything that had even the words."

14 comments

Crash problems for total futarchy

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:41:59 +0000

Submitted by Stuart_Armstrong • 7 votes • 13 comments

Futarchy holds great promise for dealing with all the morass of poor decision making in our governments and corporations. For those who haven't heard of it, the main concept is to use betting markets, where people place bets on the expected outcome of a policy, and the decision-makers choose the policy that the market decrees is most likely to achieve their desired outcomes. Robin Hanson summarises it as "Vote Values, But Bet Beliefs".

The approach, however, could lead to problems in a large financial crisis. When a large financial bubble bursts, many things change: liquidity, risk aversion, volatility, the competence of the average investor. If the betting markets are integrated into the general market (which they would be), then they would be affected in the same way. So at precisely the moment when decision makers need the best results, their main tools would be going haywire.

This would be even worse if they'd been depending on the betting markets for their decisions, operating merely as overseers. At that point, they may have lost the ability to make effective decision entirely.

Since isolating the betting markets from the swings of the rest of the market is unrealistic/impossible/stupid, we should aim for a mixed governance model - one where betting markets play an integral part, but where the deciders still have experience making their own decisions and overriding the betting markets with some regularity.

13 comments

Kevin Drum's Article about AI and Technology

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:38:18 +0000

Submitted by knb • 20 votes • 32 comments

Kevin Drum has an article in Mother Jones about AI and Moore's Law:

THIS IS A STORY ABOUT THE FUTURE. Not the unhappy future, the one where climate change turns the planet into a cinder or we all die in a global nuclear war. This is the happy version. It's the one where computers keep getting smarter and smarter, and clever engineers keep building better and better robots. By 2040, computers the size of a softball are as smart as human beings. Smarter, in fact. Plus they're computers: They never get tired, they're never ill-tempered, they never make mistakes, and they have instant access to all of human knowledge.

The result is paradise. Global warming is a problem of the past because computers have figured out how to generate limitless amounts of green energy and intelligent robots have tirelessly built the infrastructure to deliver it to our homes. No one needs to work anymore. Robots can do everything humans can do, and they do it uncomplainingly, 24 hours a day. Some things remain scarce—beachfront property in Malibu, original Rembrandts—but thanks to super-efficient use of natural resources and massive recycling, scarcity of ordinary consumer goods is a thing of the past. Our days are spent however we please, perhaps in study, perhaps playing video games. It's up to us.

Although he only mentions consumer goods, Drum presumably means that scarcity will end for services and consumer goods. If scarcity only ended for consumer goods, people would still have to work (most jobs are currently in the services economy).

Drum explains that our linear-thinking brains don't intuitively grasp exponential systems like Moore's law.

Suppose it's 1940 and Lake Michigan has (somehow) been emptied. Your job is to fill it up using the following rule: To start off, you can add one fluid ounce of water to the lake bed. Eighteen months later, you can add two. In another 18 months, you can add four ounces. And so on. Obviously this is going to take a while.

By 1950, you have added around a gallon of water. But you keep soldiering on. By 1960, you have a bit more than 150 gallons. By 1970, you have 16,000 gallons, about as much as an average suburban swimming pool.

At this point it's been 30 years, and even though 16,000 gallons is a fair amount of water, it's nothing compared to the size of Lake Michigan. To the naked eye you've made no progress at all.

So let's skip all the way ahead to 2000. Still nothing. You have—maybe—a slight sheen on the lake floor. How about 2010? You have a few inches of water here and there. This is ridiculous. It's now been 70 years and you still don't have enough water to float a goldfish. Surely this task is futile?

But wait. Just as you're about to give up, things suddenly change. By 2020, you have about 40 feet of water. And by 2025 you're done. After 70 years you had nothing. Fifteen years later, the job was finished.

He also includes this nice animated .gif which illustrates the principle very clearly.

Drum continues by talking about possible economic ramifications.

Until a decade ago, the share of total national income going to workers was pretty stable at around 70 percent, while the share going to capital—mainly corporate profits and returns on financial investments—made up the other 30 percent. More recently, though, those shares have started to change. Slowly but steadily, labor's share of total national income has gone down, while the share going to capital owners has gone up. The most obvious effect of this is the skyrocketing wealth of the top 1 percent, due mostly to huge increases in capital gains and investment income.

Drum says the share of (US) national income going to workers was stable until about a decade ago. I think the graph he links to shows the worker's share has been declining since approximately the late 1960s/early 1970s. This is about the time US immigration levels started increasing (which raises returns to capital and lowers native worker wages).

The rest of Drum's piece isn't terribly interesting, but it is good to see mainstream pundits talking about these topics.

32 comments