Am about to pack up computer then go to the airport to start a sequence of flights to give this a try.

I already have a room in a hostel booked for a few nights for when I get there, and will see how stuff goes.

Anyways, since there's been on and off discussion on this, just thought I'd post that I'm actually giving this a try.

(Will likely be a day or two before I can reply/comment/etc, given length of flights, etc.)

EDIT: Ugh. You take care of one aspect of the planning fallacy, and fail elsewhere. Long story short, I missed my flight and had to reschedule it to friday.

EDIT2: Packing up computer and going off to airport. Again. This time will be early.

EDIT3: And am here. and am exhausted. :) Will start looking for work stuff tomorrow. There's a job board at this hostel, but apparently there's not much currently. But right now am rather sleep deprived.

EDIT4: So today (Monday, May 21st) went to the visitor information center. I must have misunderstood the original article, was under the impression that the visitor center had job boards. Didn't, but pointed me to a nearby recruiting/contracting agency which they said might have appropriate stuff for visitors on a work&holiday visa. Went there. said that at least as of today there's nothing, but also needed a resume (which I didn't have with me, and my work experience is limited anyways.) Anyways, got a copy of the form, will dig out/fix up what resume I do have, and also keep looking. The board at this hostel didn't have much of anything in the way of work that I saw. Will look again, though, and see if I can find others.

EDIT5 (May 29th): Still looking for work, been asking/applying to various places, including that recruiting/contracting agency, and am right now waiting (well, and still looking.) Over the weekend, though, MileyCyrus and I went on an organized 3day Uluru/Kata Tjuta/Kings Canyon trip/hikes, which was awesome. But again, as far as work, tossing out inquiries and stuff all over, trying to find out who's hiring at the moment.

Here you go: http://www.ai-class.com/

They're still working out kinks in the site, and no homework is up yet, but the initial set of lectures (really really basic "what is AI/welcome to the first day of class" type stuff is up), so if you signed up, then sign in and hopefully the site will work for you.

(EDIT: Disregard this, the source of my confusion was me mixing up marked and unmarked arrows. I was thinking "marked arrow = actual causal arrow _or_ latent common cause in the underlying reality, unmarked arrow = actual causal arrow in the underlying reality", but I mixed up the definitions and it's actually the other way around. Actually, I think I was being stupid in multiple ways, but the overall answer to this post is that I was being stupid and mixed up multiple things, including to what extent steps 1 and 2 could be trusted to find all v-structures, given the possibility of unknown latent variables. (EDIT2: Wait, if there truly was an adb v-structure, shouldn't step 2 have at least put an unmarked arrowhead from a to b?))

Am having another go at trying to go through the book (second edition, first printing), and find myself rather confused about rule 2 in step 3 of the IC* algorithm.

Suppose a, b, c, d are all observed variables, a and d are adjacent by an initially undirected edge, a*->b*->c*->d (where *-> represents a marked arrow), and c is not adjacent to d.

Rule 2 would have us now turn the a-d edge into an unmarked arrow from a to d

But... shouldn't an unmarked arrow from a to d be the one thing that is absolutely forbidden? ie, one of the possible underlying reality states allowed by the above is that c has causal influence over d. If you also have a -> d, then you have a v structure with a,d,c. But assuming stable distribution relative to the true latent structure and having the actual distribution of the observable variables rather than just a sample, and all those other "it's all well behaved" assumptions, then steps 1 and 2 should have already found all of the v structures among the observed variables.

So how is rule 2 of step 3 allowed to introduce potential new (possible) v structures among  observed variables? Illumination would be appreciated, thank you. :)

Taught by professors Sebastian Thurn and Peter Norvig: http://www.ai-class.com/

I figured some here might be interested. :)

Mystery Solved is more or less a webcomic about a gentleman adventurer/debunker.

I came across it earlier today and I figured some here might be amused.

Watch this Extra Credits and take note especially of the end, where they're offering consultation to educators and doctors re making educational stuff and other useful stuff more like games. (Incidentally, the people that make Extra Credits all work in or have been around in the game industry)

I figured I'll email them and going to point them to LW, see if they're willing to give any insights re rationality training. Especially in light of the fact that the subject of games for teaching rationality has come here up before.

Hey, maybe we'll learn something about how to learn something about how to be Less Wrong.

So, apparently appsumo is having a custom reddit bundle, a bundle meant to appeal to redditors, and 10% of the proceeds get donated. On the surface, doesn't sound _that_ interesting, except...

Take a closer look: http://appsumo.com/reddit-special-deal/ and find that the recipient of the donations will be... SENS!

I find this to be an interesting development. It wasn't the "custom transhumanist bundle" or "the custom sens bundle" but "the custom reddit bundle". Yes, "reddit" doesn't, in and of itself, count as extremely mainstream as such, but I'd say it's still an interesting development.

As in title, right now just checking for interest, and if so will set a date/place.

I've been sort of banging my head on this issue (I have jury duty next week (first time)).

The obvious possibility is what if I get put on a drug use case? The obvious injustices of the anti-drug laws are well known, and I know of the concept of nullification, but I'm bouncing back and forth as to its validity.

Some of my thoughts on this:

Thought 1: Just decide if they did it or didn't do it.

Thought 2: But can I ethically bring myself to declare guilty (and thus result in potential serious punishment) someone that really didn't actually do anything wrong? ie, to support a seriously unjust law?

Thought 3: (and here's where TDT style issues come in) On the other hand, the algorithm "if jury member, don't convict if I don't like a particular law" seems to be in general a potentially really really bad algorithm. (ie, one obvious failure mode for that algorithm would be homophobic juries that refuse to convict on hate crimes against gays)

Thought 4: Generally, those sorts of people tend to not be serious rationalists. Reasoning as if I can expect correlations among our decision algorithms seems questionable.

Thought 5: Really? Really? If I wanted to start making excuses like that, I could probably whenever I feel like construct a reference class for which I am the sole member. Thought 4 style reasoning seems itself to potentially be shaky.

So, basically I'm smart enough to have the above sequence of thoughts, but not smart enough to actually resolve it. What is a rationalist to do? (In other words, any help with untangling my thoughts on this so that I can figure out if I should go by the rule of "nullify if appropriate" or "nullification is bad, period, even if the law in question is hateful" would be greatly appreciated.)