In which I discuss the beginnings of a technique for learning from certain kinds of failures more effectively:

"What follows is an edited version of an exercise I performed about a month ago following an embarrassing error cascade. I call it a ‘failure autopsy’, and on one level it’s basically the same thing as an NFL player taping his games and analyzing them later, looking for places to improve.

But the aspiring rationalist wishing to do the something similar faces a more difficult problem, for a couple of reasons:

First, the movements of a mind can’t be seen in the same way the movements of a body can, meaning a different approach must be taken when doing granular analysis of mistaken cognition.

Second, learning to control the mind is simply much harder than learning to control the body.

And third, to my knowledge, nobody has really even tried to develop a framework for doing with rationality what an NFL player does with football, so someone like me has to pretty much invent the technique from scratch on the fly.  

I took a stab at doing that, and I think the result provides some tantalizing hints at what a more mature, more powerful versions of this technique might look like. Further, I think it illustrates the need for what I’ve been calling a “Dictionary of Internal Events”, or a better vocabulary for describing what happens between your ears."

I'm giving a talk today on the future of governance at the University of Colorado at Boulder, in room ECON 117, at 5 p.m.

While the talk itself isn't concerned with rationality, I'd still be interested in networking with any LW sorts who happen to be in the area.

Best,

-Trent Fowler

There will be a rationalist meetup in Denver tomorrow at 7:00 pm at Darcy's Pub, 4955 S Ulster St. #103 Denver, CO 80237

This Saturday I'll be giving a presentation on the control problem for superintelligent agents. It'll be from 2-4 at the Boulder Hacker Space, 1965 33rd Street, UNIT B, Boulder, CO.

This Saturday at the Hellems Arts and Sciences building, room 185 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, there will be a presentation on Intelligence Explosion dynamics.

Hope to see anyone there that can make it. 

I'd like recommendations for articles dealing with slow and hard takeoff scenarios. I already found Yudkowsky's post 'hard takeoff', I know 'Superintelligence' has a section on it, and I think the Yudkowsky/Hanson debate mostly dealt with it.

Is there anything else?

Cross-posted

Nothing weighty or profound today, but I noticed a failure mode in myself which other people might plausibly suffer from so I thought I'd share it.

Basically, I noticed that sometimes when I discovered a more effective way of doing something -- say, going from conventional flashcards to Anki -- I found myself getting discouraged.

I realized that it was because each time I found such a technique, I automatically compared my current self to a version of me that had had access to the technique the whole time. Realizing that I wasn't as far along as I could've been resulted in a net loss of motivation. 

Now, I deliberately compare two future versions of myself, one armed with the technique I just discovered and one without. Seeing how much farther along I will be results in a net gain of motivation.

A variant of this exercise is taking any handicap you might have and wildly exaggerating it. I suffer from mild Carpal Tunnel (or something masquerading as CT) which makes progress in programming slow. When I feel down about this fact I imagine how hard programming would be without hands.

Sometimes I go as far as to plan out what I might do if I woke up tomorrow with a burning desire to program and nothing past my wrists. Well, I'd probably figure out a way to code by voice and then practice mnemonics because I wouldn't be able to write anything down. Since these solutions exist I can implement one or both of them the moment my carpal tunnel gets bad enough.

With this realization comes a boost in motivation knowing I can go a different direction if required. 

A while back I came across a delightful web developer skill tree, and I was wondering if technical rationality has gotten to the point where someone could make one of these for an aspiring rationalist.

I think seeing a clear progression from beginning skills to advanced ones laid out graphically helps those starting on the path conceptualize the process. 

This Saturday I'm giving a presentation at the Boulder Future Salon, topic will be non-religious spirituality. The more LWians that can make it the better, because I'm really trying to get some community building done in the Boulder/Denver area. There's an insane amount of potential here.

Details.

I'm giving a talk to the Boulder Future Salon in Boulder, Colorado in a few weeks on the Intelligence Explosion hypothesis. I've given it once before in Korea but I think the crowd I'm addressing will be more savvy than the last one (many of them have met Eliezer personally). It could end up being important, so I was wondering if anyone considers themselves especially capable of playing Devil's Advocate so I could shape up a bit before my talk? I'd like there to be no real surprises. 

I'd be up for just messaging back and forth or skyping, whatever is convenient.

I've recently had the bad luck of having numerous people close to me die. Though I've wanted to contribute to anti-aging and anti-death research for a while, I'm only now in the position of being stable and materially well-off enough to throw around semi-serious cash.

Who should I donate to? I don't want to do anything with cryonics yet; I haven't given cryonics enough thought to be convinced it'd be worth the money. But I was considering the Methuselah foundation.

Suggestions?