A physics research team has members who can (and occasionally do) in secret insert false signals into the experiment the team is running. The goal is practice resistance to false positives. A very interesting approach, first time I've heard about physicists using it.
Bias combat in action :-)
The LIGO is almost unique among physics experiments in practising ‘blind injection’. A team of three collaboration members has the ability to simulate a detection by using actuators to move the mirrors. “Only they know if, and when, a certain type of signal has been injected,”...
Two such exercises took place during earlier science runs of LIGO, one in 2007 and one in 2010. ... The original blind-injection exercises took 18 months and 6 months respectively. The first one was discarded, but in the second case, the collaboration wrote a paper and held a vote to decide whether they would make an announcement. Only then did the blind-injection team ‘open the envelope’ and reveal that the events had been staged.
Two minutes' inspection of her thesis would, I think, lead any reasonable person to conclude that it was almost certainly not written by her adviser. The extremely unusual style is consistent with her adviser having, say, had all the actual clever mathematical ideas in it, but again the point here is merely that Piper is clearly intelligent, and being able to understand the material described in her thesis (which, again, I think it's clear she does if you actually look at the thesis) is itself indicative of a high IQ.
(PS. Hi, Eugine/Azathoth/Ra/Lion. This ...
An excellent piece about communication styles, in particular about a common type of interaction on the 'net which is sometimes seen on LW as well. I'll quote some chunks, but the whole thing is good.
...Here’s a series of events that happens many times daily on my favorite bastion of miscommunication, the bird website. Person tweets some fact. Other people reply with other facts. Person complains, “Ugh, randos in my mentions.” Harsh words may be exchanged, and everyone exits the encounter thinking the other person was monumentally rude for no reason. ...
For
I agree with gjm that the remark about IQ is wrong. This is about cultures. Let's call them "nerd culture" and "social culture" (those are merely words that came immediately to my mind, I do not insist on using them).
Using the terms of Transactional Analysis, the typical communication modes in "nerd culture" are activity and withdrawal, and the typical communication modes in "social culture" are pastimes and games. This is what people are accustomed to do and to expect from other people in their social circle. It doesn't depend on IQ or gender or color of skin; I guess it depends on personality and on what people in our perceived "tribe" really are doing most of the time. -- If people around you exchange information most of the time, it is reasonable to expect that the next person also wants to exchange information with you. If people around you play status games most of the time, it is reasonable to expect that the next person also wants to play a status game with you. -- In a different culture, people are confused and project.
A person coming from "nerd culture" to "social culture" may be oblivious to the status...
Löb's theorem states that "If it's provable that (if it's provable that p then p), then it's provable that p." In addition to being a theorem of set theory with Peano arithmetic, it's also a theorem of modal logic.
Try this on for size: If I believe that (if I believe that this chocolate chip will cure my headache, then this chocolate chip will cure my headache), then I believe that this chocolate chip will cure my headache.
-Agenty Duck
Obvious in hindsight: one cause of massive bee death turned out to be neonicotinoids. In other words, newsflash: insecticides kill insects.
Was there any way this could have been anticipated?
Nate Soares' recent post "The Art of Response" on Minding Our Way talks about effective response patterns that people develop to deal with problems. What response patterns do you use in life or in your field of expertise that you have found to be quite effective?
I finally gave in and opened a Tumblr account at http://dooperator.tumblr.com/ . This open-thread comment is just to link my identity on Less Wrong with my username on websites where I do not want my participation to be revealed by a simple Google search for my name, such as SlateStarCodex and Tumblr.
Information coupled with suprise this week:
the chance of transmission during any single episode of unprotected vaginal sex is estimated at a 1 in 2,000. Thus, the odds you were infected are 0.05 x 0.0005 = 0.000025, i.e. 1 in 40,000. That's less than your lifetime risk of getting killed by lightning (if you live in the US) and less than the chance you will die in the coming week in some sort of accident. As for other STDs, the lack of symptoms is a strong indicator that you didn't catch anything.
A less authoritative but more nuanced relevant...
I'm an undergrad going for a major in statistics and minors in computer science and philosophy. I also read a lot of philosophy and cognitive science on the side. I don't have the patience to read through all of the LW sequences. Which LW sequences / articles do you think are important for me to read that I won't get from school or philosophy reading?
Smoking cigarettes is very protecting against parkinsons. The evidence is clear, large and replicated in large samples. Hypothetically, would someone with strong genetic indications of risk for parkinsons, and genetic indications that they are protective against cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and that kind of other smoking related diseases be making a healthy choice to start smoking?.
Presumably it's the nicotine that has this effect. You can get nicotine into your system in ways less unhealthy than smoking cigarettes.
Anecdotally, Russians and Englishmen talk (pronounce) Latin [names of biological taxa] rather differently. In my opinion, not really informed because we did not have a Latin course, saying '-aceae' as 'ayshae' is wrong, and although I know people do that it still throws me off for a moment. Still, I've just realized that there are non-English biologists who mangle Latin as they wish. Has anyone got any data on how widespread is the English Latin?
Yes, I'm aware politics kills minds.
What did Obama do wrong?
I hear people say (1) the economy didn't grow fast enough and (2) the U.S. is weaker, globally.
Is there objective evidence of either of these claims? Or is this mostly just blue vs. green tribalism?
Paperclip maximizer thought experiment makes a lot of people pattern match AI risk to Science Fiction. Do you know any AI risk related thought experiments that avoid that?
...Can we consider computer security a success story at all? I admit, I am not a professional security researcher but between Bitcoin, the DNMs, and my own interest in computer security & crypto, I read a great deal on these topics and from watching it in real-time, I had the definite impression that, far from anyone at all considering modern computer security a success (or anything you want to emulate at all), the Snowden leaks came as an existential shock and revelation of systemic failure to the security community in which it collectively realized that it had been staggeringly complacent because the NSA had devoted a little effort to concealing its work, that the worst-case scenarios were ludicrously optimistic, and that most research and efforts were almost totally irrelevant to the NSA because the NSA was still hacking everyone everywhere because it had simply shifted resources to attacking the weakest links, be it trusted third parties, decrypted content at rest, the endless list of implementation flaws (Heartbleed etc), and universal attacks benefiting from precomputation. Even those who are the epitome of modern security like Google were appalled to discover how, rather...
We wouldn't consider armor research not a success story just because at some point flintlocks phased out heavy battlefield armor.
I think you missed the point of my examples. If flintlocks killed heavy battlefield armor, that was because they were genuinely superior and better at attack. But we are not in a 'machine gun vs bow and arrow' situation.
The Snowden leaks were a revelation not because the NSA had any sort of major unexpected breakthrough. They have not solved factoring. They do not have quantum computers. They have not made major progress on P=NP or reversing one-way functions. The most advanced stuff from all the Snowden leaks I've read was the amortized attack on common hardwired primes, but that again was something well known in the open literature and why we were able to figure it out from the hints in the leaks. In fact, the leaks strongly affirmed that the security community and crypto theory has reached parity with the NSA, that things like PGP were genuinely secure (as far as the crypto went...), and that there were no surprises like differential cryptanalysis waiting in the wings. This is great - except it doesn't matter.
They were a revelation because they reve...
Assuming it was written by her and not her adviser.
The writing doesn't sound like the same voice as her advisor's (e.g. arXiv:1402.1131). OTOH it is plausible that most of the original research in it was the latter's. Also, the fact that she doesn't seem to have ever published anything else is pretty suspicious. EDIT: also, she took ten years to finish it.
All in all, I'd guess her IQ is above 100 but below 130.
That only postpones the problem for a few years, unless you establish a permanent military presence.
The US can keep 100,000+ soldiers on the ground for 7 years, have all of its top military brass focus on that conflict, fight cleverly and aggressively against the opposition, lead the country through the process of drafting a constitution and holding elections, train the new military and police forces, spend tens of billions of dollars helping to build the country's infrastructure (in addition to hundreds of billions of dollars of military spending), gradually remove its troops in an orderly fashion as negotiated with the country's new government, and still have everything go horribly within a couple years of leaving.
Why boredom is anything but boring
Implicated in everything from traumatic brain injury to learning ability, boredom has become extremely interesting to scientists.
But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
-John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian philosopher, in his autobiography
Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided. Is there testimony against the one-sided evidence-by-testimony for the paradox of hedonism at the ...
Has anyone heard of Amazon using drones for actual deliveries? Or are they still just in testing?
If you made an incorrect statement and this gets pointed out, you will lose status for admitting it
LW culture is built specifically to encourage and reward correcting oneself.
I agree with your implied point that putting boots on the ground for a few years (and then removing them) is less likely to lead to horrible outcomes if it's done in a stable region, where law-and-order is well-established in the neighboring countries and there are unlikely to be any major disruptive events in the region during the military engagement or the decade after it has ended.
How about actually removing your troops in an orderly fashion, rather than cause negotiations to fail over a minor technical matter and remove the troops all at once.
I a...
Can Economics Change Your Mind?
Economics is sometimes dismissed as more art than science. In this skeptical view, economists and those who read economics are locked into ideologically motivated beliefs—liberals versus conservatives, for example—and just pick whatever empirical evidence supports those pre-conceived positions. I say this is wrong and solid empirical evidence, even of the complicated econometric sort, changes plenty of minds.
Can economics change your mind?
...Where to start? I could write a whole ongoing blog on this question (wait…). In
Carol Dweck on fixed vs. growth mindsets
In terms of theory, I'm not sure if fixed vs. growth mindset is the best way to describe the comparison. I feel like there should be a better way to more precisely define the two concepts, but I'm not sure exactly how. I think the research is useful still despite my concerns although you're more than welcome to argue it isn't. Anyway, I've been wondering about this in terms of LessWrong. Does LessWrong as a community have a fixed-mindset? The praising for being smart vs. praising for effort distinction used made...
If I try to quickly taboo the words "fixed mindset" and "growth mindset", the essential question is probably this:
Is the person aware (not verbally, but on the gut level) that their own skills could improve in the future, or do they implicitly assume that their skills will always stay the same?
It is a bit more complicated than this. For example, the person may deny the possibility of growth by refusing to classify something as a "skill", because merely reframing something as a "skill" (as opposed to a "trait") already suggests the possibility of improvement. For example, one person would say "I am introverted" where another person would say "my social skills of dealing with strangers are not good enough (yet)". In other words, the person may reject not just the possibility of improving their own skill, but the idea of the trait being modifyable in general.
Also, this doesn't have to apply generally. For example a stereotypical nerd may assume that you are able to learn programming, but that social skills are innate; while another person may assume that social behaviors are learned, but the talent to understand mat...
“Staying in the present’ is popular pop-psychology prescription. The evidence suggests a different and more sophisticated attitude to time:
... Zimbardo believes research reveals an optimal balance of perspectives for a happy life; commenting, our focus on reliving positive aspects of our past should be high, followed by time spent believing in a positive future, and finally spending a moderate (but not excessive) amount of time in enjoyment of the present.
So instead of living in the present, try living in the positive aspects of t...
I want to determine whether I ought to have children or not based on the consequences for the population, my child(ren) and me personally.
I reckon the demographic factor that is most relevant to this choice is my status as a mentally ill person.
My decision cycle lasts from now till my prime fertile years (till I’m 35).
I will have kids if:
The consequences for the population is good. If existing evidence suggests population growth is good then the consequences for population growth is good. Population growth is basically good. There may be some non-linear...
Can you think of any good reason to consult any so called psychic?
I can think of a good reason for anything. I ask my brain "conditional upon it being a good idea, what might the situation be?" and the virtual outcome pump effortlessly generates scenarios. A professional fiction writer could produce a flood of them. Try it! For any X whatever, you can come up with answers to the question "what might the world look like, conditional upon X being a good idea?" For extreme X's, I recommend not publishing them. If you find yourself being persuaded by the stories you make up, repeat the exercise for not-X, and learn from this the deceptively persuasive power of stories.
Why consult a psychic? Because I have seen reason to think that this one is the real deal. To humour a friend who believes in this stuff. For entertainment. To expose the psychic as a fraud. To observe and learn from their cold reading technique. To audition them for a stage act. Because they're offering a free consultation and I think, why not? (Don't worry, my virtual outcome pump can generate reasons why not just as easily as reasons why.)
What is the real question here?
Cold reading and externalizing your unconscious thoughts so as to allow conscious consideration thereof are very useful things sometimes. As can sometimes be manipulating symbols so as to deeply seat changes to said thoughts. There's a great big grab-bag of tricks that human societies have come up with to do these things over the millennia including some activities practiced by the more interesting subsets of individuals using that label.
There are spaces within the occult philosophy scene that effectively say, for example, things like that coincidences and synchronicity are very important to pay attention to because noticing what you find synchronistic and interestingly-coincidental about the swirling morass of the world around you reveals what you're actually preoccupied by and how you really feel about things. Or that by forcing yourself to have unconscious emotional reactions to fairly random charged symbols and trying to interpret what they mean to you (think tarot), you gain a better appreciation of what is important to you.
Could a hypothetical being exist That is so sensitive to harms and good m, and experienced such extremes of harm and good, that altruistic people would be best served by dedicating themselves to the service of that one being?
Foundational Research weighs in on cooperation
Direct impact careers - the topic EA's often skirt around. I'm somewhat disturbed by one of the first exposures to EA: that medicine is not an effective, altruistic career whatsoever because the shear supply of people interested and capable of becoming doctors is so great (even after artificial restriction). It seems rather theoretical. What is the the economic term for 'replaceability of workers by the labour workforce'? It would be something like a human equivelant of fungibility, with perhaps some element of 'elasticity'. I'd want to see empirical work in this area.
If you are analysing survey data about gamblers attitudes to laws about casinos, that couldn't be specified in PICOT format right?
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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