Pigliucci:

So morality has a lot to do with logic — indeed I have argued that moral reasoning is a type of applied logical reasoning — but it is not logic “all the way down,” it is anchored by certain contingent facts about humanity, bonoboness and so forth.

But, despite Yudkowsky’s confident claim, morality isn’t a matter of logic “all the way down,” because it has to start with some axioms, some brute facts about the type of organisms that engage in moral reasoning to begin with. Those facts don’t come from physics (though, like everything else, they better be compatible with all the laws of physics), they come from biology. A reasonable theory of ethics, then, can emerge only from a combination of biology (by which I mean not just evolutionary biology, but also cultural evolution) and logic.

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.de/2013/01/lesswrong-on-morality-and-logic.html

I've ported the Less Wrong Wiki into an Anki deck. I hope this will be useful for new members as an alternative way to get acquainted with many interesting LessWrong concepts (Newcomb's problem? Superexponential conceptspace?).

A disclaimer: this an automatized scrape and therefore it might not always look great. In particular lot's of cards don't really conform the "simple and specific" rules for spaced repetition cards (see e.g. http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm) - the deck it is thus not meant for memorizing the definitions, but rather for reading/browsing/recognizing the concepts. Nonetheless, I hope this still will be useful for some of us (certainly for me). 

I did a semi-automatic sanitization of the cards, but if you find some bogus ones (or any other problem) please let me know and I'll fix it.

The scraped Wiki version is from 01/09/2012 and there are currently 628 cards. There are "forward" format cards (name front, description back) and also "reverse" cards (in cloze format where it was possible, i.e. where the concept name comes up in the description text).

The deck is here:

https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B6GcntZeZpBHVjRkVUE2Uko2Vk0/edit

The link also contains a .txt version of the cards (tab separated) which might be used to import to other repetition software than Anki.

The deck can be supplemented e.g. by the "List of Cognitive Biases and Fallacies" and "42 Logical Fallacies" decks as well as other decks mentioned on the spaced repetition wiki page.

Lecture at youtube. 

Sorry - haven't watched it yet so no summary, but I expect it to be fun.

Maybe it would be worth to have a single summary thread for Coursera (and also other source like Udacity etc.) material. At some future point when the courses are on-line and enough people seen them we could work out a "LW curiculum". Here is my subjective list of particularly intersting courses for LW audience:

A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior
Artificial Intelligence Planning
Automata
Basic Behavioral Neurology
Computer Science 101
Clinical Problem Solving
Critical Thinking in Global Challenges
Data Analysis
Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World
Game Theory
Human-Computer Interaction
Introduction to Genetics and Evolution
Introduction to Genome Science
Introduction to Mathematical Thinking
Machine Learning
Microeconomics Principles
Model Thinking
Nanotechnology: The Basics
Networked Life
Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes
Neural Networks for Machine Learning
Neuroethics
Principles of Economics for Scientists
Probabilistic Graphical Models
Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation
Rationing and Allocating Scarce Medical Resources
Statistics One
Think Again: How to Reason and Argue

Please note I haven't picked any programming/algorithm courses - there seem to be quite a lot of nice ones. Subscribe here. Plain text list (111 courses):

A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior
A History of the World since 1300
Aboriginal Worldviews and Education
Algorithms, Part I
Algorithms, Part II
Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 1
Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 2
An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python
An Introduction to Operations Management
An Introduction to the U.S. Food System: Perspectives from Public Health
Analytic Combinatorics, Part I
Analytic Combinatorics, Part II
Analytical Chemistry
Artificial Intelligence Planning
Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Automata
Basic Behavioral Neurology
Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach
Calculus: Single Variable
Cardiac Arrest, Hypothermia, and Resuscitation Science
Chemistry: Concept Development and Application
Clinical Problem Solving
Community Change in Public Health
Compilers
Computational Investing, Part I
Computational Photography
Computer Architecture
Computer Science 101
Computer Vision: From 3D Reconstruction to Visual Recognition
Computer Vision: The Fundamentals
Computing for Data Analysis
Contraception: Choices, Culture and Consequences
Control of Mobile Robots
Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps
Critical Thinking in Global Challenges
Cryptography
Cryptography II
Data Analysis
Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society
Digital Signal Processing
Drugs and the Brain
E-learning and Digital Cultures
Energy 101
Equine Nutrition
Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World
Functional Programming Principles in Scala
Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering
Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application
Fundamentals of Pharmacology
Galaxies and Cosmology
Game Theory
Gamification
Greek and Roman Mythology
Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part I
Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act
Health for All Through Primary Care
Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Heterogeneous Parallel Programming
How Things Work 1
Human-Computer Interaction
Information Security and Risk Management in Context
Intermediate Organic Chemistry - Part 1
Intermediate Organic Chemistry - Part 2
Internet History, Technology, and Security
Introduction to Astronomy
Introduction to Finance
Introduction to Genetics and Evolution
Introduction to Genome Science
Introduction to Logic
Introduction to Mathematical Thinking
Introduction to Philosophy
Introduction to Sociology
Introduction to Sustainability
Introduction à la Programmation Objet (in French)
Introductory Human Physiology
Introductory Organic Chemistry - Part 1
Introductory Organic Chemistry - Part 2
Know Thyself
Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code
Learn to Program: The Fundamentals
Listening to World Music
Machine Learning
Mathematical Biostatistics Bootcamp
Medical Neuroscience
Microeconomics Principles
Model Thinking
Modern & Contemporary American Poetry
Nanotechnology: The Basics
Natural Language Processing
Networked Life
Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes
Neural Networks for Machine Learning
Neuroethics
Nutrition for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Planet Earth
Principles of Economics for Scientists
Principles of Obesity Economics
Probabilistic Graphical Models
Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation
Rationing and Allocating Scarce Medical Resources
Scientific Computing
Securing Digital Democracy
Social Network Analysis
Software Engineering for SaaS
Statistics One
The Modern World: Global History since 1760
The Social Context of Mental Health and Illness
Think Again: How to Reason and Argue
VLSI CAD: Logic to Layout
Vaccine Trials: Methods and Best Practices
Vaccines

From Charlie Stross' blog:

I'm in Munich this week, and I plan to be drinking in the Paulaner Brauhaus(Kapuzinerplatz 5, 80337 München; click here for map) from 7pm on Monday 18th. All welcome! (Yes, I will sign books if you bring them.) If in doubt, look for the plush Cthulhu!

Bill "Numerical Recipes" Press and Freeman "Dyson sphere" Dyson have a new paper on iterated prisoner dilemas (IPD). Interestingly they found new surprising results:

It is generally assumed that there exists no simple ultimatum strategy whereby one player can enforce a unilateral claim to an unfair share of rewards. Here, we show that such strategies unexpectedly do exist. In particular, a player X who is witting of these strategies can (i) deterministically set her opponent Y’s score, independently of his strategy or response, or (ii) enforce an extortionate linear relation between her and his scores.

They discuss a special class of strategies - zero determinant (ZD) strategies of which tit-for-tat (TFT) is a special case:

The extortionate ZD strategies have the peculiar property of sharply distinguishing between “sentient” players, who have a theory of mind about their opponents, and “evolutionary” players, who may be arbitrarily good at exploring a fitness landscape (either locally or globally), but who have no theory of mind.

The evolutionary player adjusts his strategy to maximize score, but doesn't take his opponent explicitly into account in another way (hence has "no theory of mind" of the opponent). Possible outcomes are:

A)

If X alone is witting of ZD strategies, then IPD reduces to one of two cases, depending on whether Y has a theory of mind. If Y has a theory of mind, then IPD is simply an ultimatum game (15, 16), where X proposes an unfair division and Y can either accept or reject the proposal. If he does not (or if, equivalently, X has fixed her strategy and then gone to lunch), then the game is dilemma-free for Y. He can maximize his own score only by giving X even more; there is no benefit to him in defecting.

B)

If X and Y are both witting of ZD, then they may choose to negotiate to each set the other’s score to the maximum cooperative value. Unlike naive PD, there is no advantage in defection, because neither can affect his or her own score and each can punish any irrational defection by the other. Nor is this equivalent to the classical TFT strategy (7), which produces indeterminate scores if played by both players.

This latter case sounds like a formalization of Hosfstadter's superrational agents. The cooperation enforcement via cross-setting the scores is very interesting.

Is this connection true or am I misinterpreting it? (This is not my field and I've only skimmed the paper up to now.) What are the implications for FAI? If we'd get into an IPD situation with an agent for which we simply can not put together a theory of mind, do we have to live with extortion? What would effectively mean to have a useful theory of mind in this case?

The paper ends in a grand style (spoiler alert):

It is worth contemplating that, though an evolutionary player Y is so easily beaten within the confines of the IPD game, it is exactly evolution, on the hugely larger canvas of DNA-based life, that ultimately has produced X, the player with the mind.

Would it be possible to have a monthly podcast on Less Wrong topics? A possible format could be roughly four panelist (maybe half core and half rotating members) discussing theoretical and practical aspects or rationality, AI/singularity, cognitive science etc.

Episodes can be also easily framed by assigning some reading from sequences or recent LW articles and then discussing them in podcast form. This format seems to work great for www.partiallyexaminedlife.com (quite entertaining and informative podcast albeit on the diseased discipline of philosophy).

To keep things interesting occasional episodes could be done in the form of discussions with guests (via skype), e.g. the usual suspects from the SAIA and fellow AI scientists, people like Robin Hanson, Aubrey de Grey, other rationalist/skeptical bloggers/podcasters but also AI skeptics and so on.

The level of the podcast should be still accesible to newcomers but the discussion could thread into bit deeper waters. I would love to hear discussions also on more technical topics (like CEV, Solomonoff induction, AIXI etc.). Just imagine how exciting could be discussions on the more controversial decision-theoretic paradoxes!

Further possibility is from time to time plan ahead and cover in more depth the topic from that week's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality podcast, which would potentially help to increase the audience (it would be like a post-grad HPMoR).

What do you think? Could this be done? With the depth and breadth of material we have here and all the interesting people to talk to I don't think there would be a shortage of topics.

Edit: Changed the (bi-)weekly timescale to monthly.