Free research help, editing and article downloads for LessWrong
Update: Please use the most recent thread.
The LW Public Goods Team wants to encourage useful research projects (as well other kinds of projects) for the LW community. If you're interested in doing this kind of work, you might run into a problem that is best solved by good outside assistance. Without assistance you might get discouraged and stop working on the project or never even start it. We want to help you avoid that. Do you
- Not know how to interpret a finding and want help figuring it out?
- Need access to a particular paper and need someone with a library subscription to download it for you?
- Need someone to edit your writing?
- Not even know what you're having trouble with, but you know is that you're stuck and need someone to troubleshoot you?
Then, we want to help!
How do you request such help? For now, I think the best way is to post to the discussion section about your problem. That way other interested people can also provide help and be interested in your research. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, you may post to the public goods team mailing list (lw-public-goods-team@googlegroups.com) or if it's not too long after this was posted, post in the comments.
I personally commit to doing at least 3 hours a week of tasks like these for people doing LessWrong related projects (assuming demand for it; I'll be keeping a log) for at least the next month. Morendil has committed to doing at least an hour of this and atucker has promised to some as well.
Our goal is to find out whether this kind of help is effective and encourages people. If this kind of assistance turns out to be valuable, we'll continue to offer it.
If you would like to volunteer some time (a little or a lot), say so in the comments!
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Comments (439)
This sounds like a good idea, thanks for committing the time for it! On reading I had two thoughts:
1 - Good idea!
I'll have to ask the others to post what they think their strong points are.
2 - I'm not actually familiar with HN office hours, so I will have to take a look. Thanks for the link!
Can you elaborate on what kind of setup you're thinking of in terms of HN office hours?
Let people make appointments. Everyone involved would agree to meet somewhere online and depending on exactly what was needed: have a conversation or use a session sharing tool for some collaborative work.
This sounds like it might be very useful. I tend to generate ideas all the time that seem like they could both be of great use to LW at large, and to me personally as well, but don't know how to formalize them, communicate them, or extrapolate to most of the important/useful implications.
I'd like a copy of "The Flynn effect puzzle: A 30-year examination from the right tail of the ability distribution provides some missing pieces" (old Wired discussion).
Sent to your email. I am a little nervous about posting them somewhere public. I'd appreciate advice on this topic.
Thanks; it's interesting so far. (The SAT and ACT series seem to, if anything, contradict the thesis - everything but math scores have stagnated or actually fallen.)
As far as posting goes publicly, I host a lot of PDFs (for the DNB FAQ, mostly), and lukeprog (one of his selling points) hosts what must be hundreds* of PDFs so far. Neither of us has had any trouble so far, and in one case, The Notenki Memoirs, I believe the publisher has even been contacted by someone wanting to turn my ebook** into a legitimate one - no takedowns so far (somewhat to my surprise).
* My local mirror of commonsenseatheism.com lists 573 PDFs
** I not merely host TNM, but I made the ebook single-handedly from my scans
Thanks! maybe I will host on a dropbox account publicly.
Already done: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5317066/DNB/2011-wai-flynneffect-exists-in-smartpeople.pdf
Note to self: can always request from authors if LW, WP, and Reddit fail.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29304719/Papers/Aesthetics%20as%20a%20liberating%20force%20in%20mathematics%20education.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29304719/Papers/Creatine%20supplementation.pdf http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29304719/Papers/Sci%20Transl%20Med-2011-Levine-107ra109%20%281%29.pdf
I have this post under RSS but I didn't get updates about this. I'll try to find these articles. I've had difficulty getting access to the first 5, but I think I may be able to order scans from them from the library. I'll be trying that.
Thanks. I guess I'll just add any future requests as separate comments.
Really bad haul for these:
Most of these I did not have access to, but I put in a request for the library to get me a scanned copy, which should be free. If I get them, I'll post them.
I generally do not have access to electronic copies of books.
7 - link
9 - The book can be found in my library, so if it's especially important, I could find it and scan it.
Link #7 is broken; #9 is not as important as #2 or #13, but I would still like it. Maybe scan it if you go to check out another book?
Oops, should be fixed now.
Will do.
Okay, here are the other articles I found:
3 - comparing the means
4 - statistical problems
5 - natural selection
6 - life history and bioeconomy
7 - Effects of nutritional lithium supplementation
9 - Effects of nutritional lithium deficiency
10 - Drinking water lithium
12 - Naps and modafinil
Notes: Luke mentions #1 here perhaps he has it and would scan it for you?
Thanks! I've removed all the ones I've downloaded and incorporated to gwern.net from my parent comment. (I also removed the ILL metadata as appropriate.)
'3 - comparing the means' seems broken?
Luke's pretty busy and I was rather hoping there was a native electronic copy somewhere.
Should be fixed now.
OK, I've downloaded it and... it seems to be a letter to the editor about Godfrey's article, but not the actual article?
That struck me as odd too, but I checked whether it matched the citation you gave me. I'll request a scan of the actual article.
Did it ever come in?
Yes, but I'm not finding it in my drop box right now. I'll check my other folder when I get home.
I've re requested this.
Here
Thanks.
jsalvatier: I'm giving up on the WP requests for the Croxson and hope function articles - if the requests haven't borne fruit after 2 months, they probably never will. Could you handle them?
I've submitted ILL requests for both. If the second doesn't come through I'll head down there and scan it.
Thanks.
Hope function
Thanks for both.
Information Markets for decision making
Got it.
EDIT: kind of boring a paper. I regret spending so much time on it.
:(
Well, I couldn't know until I read it.
Cognitive Heuristics and American Security Policy, Kanwisher, 1989. http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/33/4/652.short
Bam! Done.
Thanks!
Please help me find:
"When the Only Constant is Change," Negotiation, Vol. 8, No. 12, December 2005
Ployart, Robert E., Jonathan C. Ziegert, and Lynn A. McFarland. “Understanding Racial Differences on Cognitive Ability Test in Selection Contexts: An Integration of Stereotype Threat and Applicant Reactions Research." Human Performance 16 (2003): 231–259.
Social influence effects on automatic racial prejudice. By Lowery, Brian S.; Hardin, Curtis D.; Sinclair, Stacey Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 81(5), Nov 2001, 842-855.
Thank you.
I wasn't able to find 1 (edit: still can't find it free, but it looks like it's available here for $5 USD), but here's 2 and 3.
I'm happy people are starting to use this.
1 may not be too much of a surprise; when I went looking, I found http://libraryguides.waldenu.edu/mmgmt6140 which noted
If this sort of help is still available, I have some math I'm working through for a post that I'd love to have checked - a page and a half of fairly basic statistics.
It can be found here (pdf): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/430270/lwalienprisoners.pdf
Thanks!
I'll take a look at this in the near future.
Here are some initial thoughts. I haven't finished working through it, so more to come:
Perhaps you should specify if the probability of detecting another player is an overall probability or on a per undetected player basis (so when there is only one player they haven't detected yet, when they detect a player it will always be that player they haven't detected)
in the definition of L_K, why is P(K survives turn i) outside the summation? What does i refer to then? Is P(K survives turn i) a constant ? Wont it in general depend on the current state of play?
Thanks for looking at it.
Probability is on a per player basis (ie: each turn, a player has a chance p for detecting each undetected player). I'll edit this so it's more clear.
For LK (as well as LR and L_P), the term outside the summation is essentially (probability the player survives the whole game) * (game length). It's necessary since the game is of fixed length, and the summation is adding (probability of dying on turn x) * (turn x). Consider if the probability of detection is zero, and players will never die - without the term outside the summation, the expected lifetime calculation will return zero.
One more comment:
Is P(K survives turn i) correct? The formula assumes that the chances of surviving are all independent, but I'm not sure that would be true.
I didn't see anything else that stood out to me.
What are you trying to learn or show with the model?
Can anyone get behind the paywall to grab me this article?
I.J. Good (1970). Some future social repercussions of computers.
I don't have direct access, but I've requested it, and I should have an electronic copy in 1-3 days.
He got it off of Reddit.
Funny quote from the article:
Sorry, Jack. It's 2012 and I'm afraid the implications and safeguards concerning machine superintelligence have still not been "thoroughly" discussed.
Well, to be fair, his timeline also turned out to be pretty wrong - the Internet took longer to get going than he thought, and obviously a UIM didn't show up in 1993 or 1994. If it's only in the 201x or 202x that the issues have been thoroughly discussed, then it's all of a piece.
(I liked his discussion of the 'just unplug the power plug' strategy.)
"Ludditeniks" does kinda roll off the tongue, doesn't it?
Not really, although I have to admit the bit about the computer propagandizing against them gave me pause: who do you see evangelizing against Luddism? High-level tech types like Marc Andreessen and tenured or well-paid economists...
Given that Good's 1970 paper is the second substantive analysis (after Good 1965) of some implications of machine superintelligence, it's odd that "Intelligence Explosion: Evidence and Import" (2012) will end up being the first article to cite it for its discussion of machine superintelligence. The paper was briefly famous for letting slip some details of his secret WWII work with Turing, while its discussion of machine superintelligence and its proposal for an association to discuss the implications of machine superintelligence (Singularity Institute, anyone?) fell into the void.
Really? I noticed it mentioned some computing machine they used in the taxonomy of generations but I had no idea it was a secret. How weird that seems in this day where all the secrets of Bletchley Park are known...
Excellent.
Can anyone access this : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00381.x/full
Don't have direct access but have requested and should have an electronic copy in 1-3 days.
Thank you!
Done
Thank you!
"Prolonged release melatonin in the treatment of primary insomnia: evaluation of the age cut-off for short- and long-term response".
Requested.
Done
Thanks.
Does anyone know how to get this 1959 paper from I.J. Good? I don't even know where to look for an old "IBM Research Report" from 1959.
http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/58DC4EA36A143C218525785E00502E30/$File/rc115.pdf
Needed: Michie (1991). Machine intelligence and the human window.
Requested.
Here
Thanks!!
Needed: Good (1982). Ethical machines.
Is this fairly important? I can stop by the library and scan this article if need be. The computer system is having a hard time with this.
I'm just going to order the original book for $10, thanks.
Well, I found 3/4 of it.
Oh, I didn't realize you still needed it. Here's the pdf.
Ah, thanks!
Needed: Good (1959). Could a machine make probability judgments? Computers and Automation 8, 14-16 and 24-26.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I have access to this journal.
I can't get direct access either. Looks like the University of Washington has physical copies of v.2 (1953)- v.21 (1972) for Computers and Automation which one can request (presumably stored off-site in a warehouse), so if you know anyone there...
Heh, I actually do. I'll submit a request. (now done)
Here it is
Hi, could anyone help me obtain
"Limits of Scientific Inquiry" by G. Holton, R. S. Morison ( 1978 )
and
"What is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable." Brockman, John (2007)
Thanks in advance
The both of these are books, so I don't have ready access to an electronic copy, but both are very cheap to buy Limits (5.5 USD) and Dangerous (4 USD).
I would guess you can also find them on pirating sites.
The second book on your list can be found here: http://free-books.us.to/get?nametype=orig&md5=5982F61815B32A27FF6C27D946EF4D36
Needed: Gregory (1971). The social implications of intelligent machines.
This one doesn't exist in the USA according to WorldCat. Perhaps somebody in Oxford could make a photocopy for me?
Oh, I think I somehow forgot about this one. I think I can order it like I ordered "Ethical Machines".
Awesome! I cannot order this one like I could for 'Ethical machines'; would much appreciate it if you can do so!
It's now in process.
here it is.
Many, many thanks, sir!
Glad to be of service.
Interesting quote:
Needed: Allen & Wallah (2012). Wise machines.
Emailed it to you.
Please help me find: Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness: Empirical Research Concerning the Pragma-Dialectical Discussion Rules, by Frans H. van Eemeren, Garssen, Bart, Meuffels, Bert
Do you need a particular article/chapter out of this book? I am more easily able to get that then the whole book.
One problem is that I can't find the table of contents, so I am not exactly sure.
Google books has preview available for pages 1-4 and 11-22. I know pages 5-10 would be very helpful for me, probably the rest of chapter one, but maybe not. It is likely everything I need is in pages 5-10.
Thank you for your help.
Here's the table of contents. Let me know what else you want and I'll try to get it.
Thank you very much. I'm all set for now.
Found.
There is a website called ezproxy dot blogspot dot com which posts occasionally working password to library sites and universities' online resources. It might prove useful to some people here.
password2password dot eamped dot com also offers the same feature as well as a subforum specifically for article requests. It makes sense to have an account there. 55face dot blogspot dot com too posts occasional passwords to library sites. It makes sense to bookmark it too. Of course, the best option would be to use your local library itself..
Needed: Weinstein et al - Parental autonomy support and discrepancies between implicit and explicit sexual identities: Dynamics of self-acceptance and defense.
Found.
Needed: Zadeh (1950), Thinking Machines, A New Field in Electrical Engineering.
This says the article was in The Columbia Engineering Quarterly which doesnt show up in my searches. Maybe contact the author of that paper for the article?
Somewhat to my surprise, he's apparently still alive, although I wonder whether this 91-year old has email or a copy.
Needed: Soll & Klayman (2004), Overconfidence in interval estimates.
Is http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.121.5860&rep=rep1&type=pdf unacceptable for some reason?
Here is the published version, if you still need it.
Needed: Should Analytic Epistemology Be Replaced By Ameliorative Psychology?.
Gotten.
Needed: Evans, Questions and challenges for the new psychology of reasoning.
Emailed it. Also, uploaded.
http://baywood.metapress.com/index/VQJDT1YD5WVBRYPJ.pdf
Requested
who is likely to acquire programming skills
Bratman (2003), Autonomy and Heirarchy.
here it is
Graber et al. (2012), Cognitive interventions to reduce diagnostic error: a narrative review.
Requested.
Thanks!
Here it is
Is this project still running? If so, I'd like to volunteer some time. I anticipate needing some help in the future and would like to preemptively do my part.
Yup! Mostly people have just posted their requests here in the comments and then I try to help out. If this gets higher volume perhaps we'll need to move it somewhere else, but for now this is working.
I monitor new comments using this RSS feed:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/7hi/free_research_help_editing_and_article_downloads/.rss .
If you'd like to help out, and you use an RSS reader, I think the easiest thing would be to just also monitor the site and respond to requests. If you don't us an RSS reader, I think you can turn RSS feeds into regular emails using this service (there are probably others too). I appreciate your help!
I look forward to helping you when you need it!
Thank you for the helpful information! I'll take your suggestion about using the RSS feed. I look forward to helping y'all and being helped when needed.
Great!
"All-You-Can-Eat Buffet: Entry Price, the Fat Tax and Meal Cessation"
here
Thanks.
I have a manuscript. i'd like to edit it for submitting in ISI journals, How can i edit my article for free?
Three articles from this issue:
Melnyk, Materialism
Kircanski et al., Cognitive aspects of depression
Polger, Functionalism as a philosophical theory of the cognitive sciences
Requested.
Thanks! Received yet?
Nope, it's taking an unusually long time.
1
2
3
Thanks so much, John!
Glad to help!
1) Moore & Whinston (1986). A model of decision-making with sequential information-acquisition (Part 1). Decision Support Systems. Volume 2, Issue 4, December 1986, Pages 285–307.
2) Moore & Whinston (1987). A model of decision-making with sequential information-acquisition (Part 2). Decision Support Systems. Volume 3, Issue 1, March 1987, Pages 47–72.
3) Brehmer (1992). Dynamic decision making: Human control of complex systems. Acta Psychologica. Volume 81, Issue 3, December 1992, Pages 211–241.
Thanks in advance.
"The effect of iodine supplementation on cognition of mildly iodine deficient young New Zealand adults"
I don't have easy access to it, because it's a book, but I sent a request to her using what I think is her email (found here).
Good idea. I was hoping there was some easier way to access theses than emailing the author, which is something I try to do as little as possible.
Do you just avoid that because you feel like it's rude to use the author's time, or are there other reasons?
The former. They held up their end of the bargain, as it were, by actually producing whatever.
Supplementary iodine fails to reverse hypothyroidism in adolescents and adults with endemic cretinism
Requested.
here
Thanks.
Inferences based on non-diagnostic information
and
Pseudodiagnosticity
ETA: Also, Pseudodiagnosticity in judgment under uncertainty
Fantastic. Thanks!
I've begun research on a paper. The topic is how whole brain emulation (WBE) might affect the macro-economy. In other words, how WBE could affect growth, unemployment, inflation, etc. I'd like some help tracking down the best sources.
I've heard that Robin Hanson has written quite a bit about the topic. I have three of his papers: "Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence," "Long-Term Growth As A Sequence of Exponential Models," and "Is a Singularity Just Around the Corner?" I also have a copy of "Economics of the Singularity" but I don't think that's peer-reviewed.
I'm currently reading through the sources. I know that other people reading LW have a much more knowledge of Hanson's work than I do. Are these the best papers to use, or am I missing any recent/relevant sources?
Also, I don't want to restrict my research to just Hanson's work. I also have "Whole Brain Emulation and the Evolution of Superorganisms" by Carl Shulman and "Economic Implications of Software Minds" by S. Kaas, S. Rayhawk, A. Salamon and P. Salamon. Again, reading my way through these, too.
Are there any better sources than the ones I already have? I don't have a great grasp of the field, so I feel like it's possible that there's a landmark paper or book on the subject I haven't come across yet. In the mean time, I'll continue my searching and reading.
I don't know much about this area, but consider reposting this in the discussion section.
FWIW, I don't know of any recent or relevant sources you haven't covered.
"Environmental Lithium Exposure in the North of Chile—I. Natural Water Sources"
here
Thanks.
Iodine papers (extracted from Pharoah):
Papua New Guinea:
Peru:
These aren't a priority. I think it's highly likely that iodine will do little for adult intelligence, and I'm mostly pursuing this line of inquiry so I can do a meta-analysis (for practice - this would be only my second one, after the n-back one) and nail down the experiment design a little more tightly.
Requested the first 3, but I can't locate the 4th one in my library system.
For that one, I think I found a later publication of it (or perhaps just a better citation):
The book/report shows up in Worldcat in ~10 institutions, so ILL should get it.
Also good would be these 2 chapters:
Ok, requested.
#1
Thanks.
1
2
3
Looks good, thanks.
Debias the environment instead of the judge: an alternative approach to reducing error in diagnostic (and other) judgment
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5317066/1993-klayman.pdf
Thanks.
The vividness effect: Elusive or illusory?
Here
Thanks.
Debiasing by instruction: The case of belief bias
The source of belief bias effects in syllogistic reasoning
Second: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5317066/1992-newstead.pdf
Thank you.
Requested.
Thanks!
Commenting to tell you not to worry about the requested paper.
(Actually, let me know if comments like this are useful.)
ETA: Or maybe a PM is more suitable.
First.
"Cognitive Sophistication Does Not Attenuate the Bias Blind Spot"
Here.
Thanks.
This has turned out to be an incredibly useful page. Thanks again, John! I wish I could upvote the article again.
This post is, I think, an excellent demonstration of what I keep telling people: if you can commit even a little bit of time over a long period doing something that people aren't voluntarily doing already, you can do something pretty useful.
For this patience claim, I usually use examples like Wikipedia articles or FAQs or self-experiments, but this page is also a good example: for a bit of menial annoying (but otherwise undemanding) work, John has materially assisted me in multiple articles (sunk costs, iodine, and lithium among others).
Believability and syllogistic reasoning
The effects of belief on the spontaneous production of syllogistic conclusions
No rush on these. Thank's to everyone contributing to this.
Thanks.
The generality of the ratio-bias phenomenon
Communicating violence risk: Frequency formats, vivid outcomes, and forensic settings
Edit: And Class inclusion, the conjunction fallacy, and other cognitive illusions
I don't mean to spam the thread, I'm just surveying a large number of papers.
First.
Third.
Negrotti, The artificial brain.
Here.
Thanks, but...
Why upload it to a site that requires me to create an account to download the file? Why not just upload it to Rapidshare or one of a thousand other filesharing sites?
Sorry, I didn't realize you had to create an account there. I've now uploaded the file to Rapidshare here.
Thanks!
There's this copy of the second one.