I heard an interview on NPR with a surgeon who asked other surgeons to use checklists in there operating rooms. Most didn't want to. He convinced some to try them out anyway.

(If you're like me, at this point you need time to get over your shock that surgeons don't use checklists. I mean, it's not like they're doing something serious, like flying a plane or extracting a protein, right?)

After trying them out, 80% said they would like to continue to use checklists. 20% said they still didn't want to use checklists.

So he asked them, If they had surgery, would they want their surgeon to use a checklist? 94% said they would want their surgeon to use a checklist.

The Guardian published a piece citing Less Wrong:

The number's up by Oliver Burkeman

When it comes to visualising huge sums – the distance to the moon, say, or the hole the economy is in – we're pretty useless really

Recent observations on the art of writing fiction:

1. My main characters in failed/incomplete/unsatisfactory stories are surprisingly reactive, that is, driven by events around them rather than by their own impulses. I think this may be related to the fundamental attribution error: we see ourselves as reacting naturally to the environment, but others as driven by innate impulses. Unfortunately this doesn't work for storytelling at all! It means my viewpoint character ends up as a ping-pong ball in a world of strong, driven other characters. (If you don't see this error in my published fiction, it's because I don't publish unsuccessful stories.)

2. Closely related to the above is another recent observation: My main character has to be sympathetic, in the sense of having motivations that I can respect enough to write them properly. Even if they're mistaken, I have to be able to respect the reasons for their mistakes. Otherwise my viewpoint automatically shifts to the characters around them, and once again the non-protagonist ends up stronger than the protagonist.

3. Just as it's necessary to learn to make things worse for your characters, rather than following the natural impulse to

"Former Christian Apologizes For Being Such A Huge Shit Head All Those Years" sounds like an Onion article, but it isn't. What's impressive is not only the fact that she wrote up this apology publicly, but that she seems to have done it within a few weeks of becoming an atheist after a lifetime of Christianity, and in front of an audience that has since sent her so much hate mail she's stopped reading anything in her inbox that's not clearly marked as being on another topic.

So, one result of this experiment would be/is a significantly below average ability to distinguish humor from serious debate...

Inspired by reading this blog for quite some time, I started reading E.T. Jaynes' Probability Theory. I've read most of the book by now, and I have incredibly mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, the development of probability calculus starting from the needs of plausible inference seems very appealing as far as the needs of statistics, applied science and inferential reasoning in general are concerned. The Bayesian viewpoint of (applied) probability is developed with such elegance and clarity that alternative interpretations can hardly be considered appealing next to it.

On the other hand, the book is very painful reading for the pure mathematician. The repeated pontification about how wrong mathematicians are for desiring rigor and generality is strange, distracting and useless. What could possibly be wrong about the desire to make the steps and assumptions of deductive reasoning as clear and explicit as possible? Contrary to what Jaynes says or at least very strongly implies (in Appendix B and elsewhere), clarity and explicitness of mathematical arguments are not opposites or mutually contradictory; in my experience, they are complementary.

Even worse, Jaynes makes several strong ... (read more)

After pondering the adefinitemaybe case for a bit, I can't shake the feeling that we really screwed this one up in a systematic way, that Less Wrong's structure might be turning potential contributors off (or turning them into trolls). I have a few ideas for fixes, and I'll post them as replies to this comment.

Essentially, what it looks like to me is that adefmay checked out a few recent articles, was intrigued, and posted something they thought clever and provocative (as well as true). Now, there were two problems with adefmay's comment: first, they had an idea of the meaning of "evidence" that rules out almost everything short of a mathematical proof, and secondly, the comment looked like something that a troll could have written in bad faith.

But what happened next is crucial, it seems to me. A bunch of us downvoted the comment or (including me) wrote replies that look pretty dismissive and brusque. Thus adefmay immediately felt attacked from all sides, with nobody forming a substantive and calm reply (at best, we sent links to pages whose relevance was clear to us but not to adefmay). Is it any wonder that they weren't willing to reconsider their definition of evi... (read more)

Okay, so....a confession.

In a fairly recent little-noticed comment, I let slip that I differ from many folks here in what some may regard as an important way: I was not raised on science fiction.

I'll be more specific here: I think I've seen one of the Star Wars films (the one about the kid who apparently grows up to become the villain in the other films). I have enough cursory familiarity with the Star Trek franchise to be able to use phrases like "Spock bias" and make the occasional reference to the Starship Enterprise (except I later found out that the reference in that post was wrong, since the Enterprise is actually supposed to travel faster than light -- oops), but little more. I recall having enjoyed the "Tripod" series, and maybe one or two other, similar books, when they were read aloud to me in elementary school. And of course I like Yudkowsky's parables, including "Three Worlds Collide", as much as the next LW reader.

But that's about the extent of my personal acquaintance with the genre.

Now, people keep telling me that I should read more science fiction; in fact, they're often quite surprised that I haven't. So maybe, while we're doing these... (read more)

In one of the dorkier moments of my existence, I've written a poem about the Great Filter. I originally intended to write music for this, but I've gone a few months now without inspiration, so I think I'll just post the poem to stand by itself and for y'all to rip apart.

The dire floor of Earth afore
saw once a fortuitous spark.
Life's swift flame sundry creature leased
and then one age a freakish beast
awakened from the dark.

Boundless skies beheld his eyes
and strident through the void he cried;
set his devices into space;
scryed for signs of a yonder race;
but desolate hush replied.

Stars surround and worlds abound,
the spheres too numerous to name.
Yet still no creature yet attains
to seize this lot, so each remains
raw hell or barren plain.

What daunting pale do most 'fore fail?
Be the test later or done?
Those dooms forgone our lives attest
themselves impel from first inquest:
cogito ergo sum.

Man does boast a charmèd post,
to wield the blade of reason pure.
But if this prov'ence be not rare,
then augurs fate our morrow bare,
our fleeting days obscure.

But might we nigh such odds defy,
and see before us cosmos bend?
Toward the heavens thy mind set,
and waver not: this proof, till 'yet,
did ne'er with man contend!

Suggested tweaks are welcome. Things that I'm currently unhappy with are that "fortuitous" scans awkwardly, and the skies/eyes rhyme feels clichéd.

Akrasia FYI:

I tried creating a separate login on my computer with no distractions, and tried to get my work done there. This reduced my productivity because it increased the cost of switching back from procrastinating to working. I would have thought that recovering in large bites and working in large bites would have been more efficient, but apparently no, it's not.

I'm currently testing the hypothesis that reading fiction (possibly reading anything?) comes out of my energy-to-work-on-the-book budget.

Next up to try: Pick up a CPAP machine off Craigslist.

Suppose we want to program an AI to represent the interest of a group. The standard utilitarian solution is to give the AI a utility function that is an average of the utility functions of the individual in the group, but that runs into the interpersonal comparison of utility problem. (Was there ever a post about this? Does Eliezer have a preferred approach?)

Here's my idea for how to solve this. Create N AIs, one for each individual in the group, and program it with the utility function of that individual. Then set a time in the future when one of those A... (read more)

I rewatched 12 Monkeys last week (because my wife was going through a Brad Pitt phase, although I think this movie cured her of that :), in which Bruce Willis plays a time traveler who accidentally got locked up in a mental hospital. The reason I mention it here is because It contained an amusing example of mutual belief updating: Bruce Willis's character became convinced that he really is insane and needs psychiatric care, while simultaneously his psychiatrist became convinced that he actually is a time traveler and she should help him save the world.

Perh... (read more)

Hello all,

I've been a longtime lurker, and tried to write up a post a while ago, only to see that I didn't have enough karma. I figure this is is the post for a newbie to present something new. I already published this particular post on my personal blog, but if the community here enjoys it enough to give it karma, I'd gladly turn it into a top-level post here, if that's in order.

Life Experience Should Not Modify Your Opinion http://paltrypress.blogspot.com/2009/11/life-experience-should-not-modify-your.html

When I'm debating some controversial topic wi... (read more)

This article about gendered language showed up on one of my feeds a few days ago. Given how often discussions of nongendered pronouns happen here, I figure it's worth sharing.

Suppose you could find out the exact outcome (up to the point of reading the alternate history equivalent of Wikipedia, history books etc.) of changing the outcome of a single historical event. What would that event be?

Note that major developments like "the Roman empire would never have fallen" or "the Chinese wouldn't have turned inwards" involve multiple events, not just one.

Oh, and to post another "what would you find interesting" query, since I found the replies to the last one to be interesting. What kind of crazy social experiment would you be curious to see the results of? Can be as questionable or unethical as you like; Omega promises you ve'll run the simulation with the MAKE-EVERYONE-ZOMBIES flag set.

Has anyone here tried Lojban? Has it been useful?

I recommend making a longer list of recent comments available, the way Making Light does.

If you've been working with dual n-back, what have you gotten out of it? Which version are you using?

Would an equivalent to a .newsrc be possible? I would really like to be able to tell the site that I've read all the comments in a thread at a given moment, so that when I come back, I'll default to only seeing more recent comments.

If quantum immortality is correct, and assuming life extension technologies and uploading are delayed for a long time, wouldn't each of us, in our main worldline, become more and more decrepit and injured as time goes on, until living would be terribly and constantly painful, with no hope of escape?

I spent December 23rd, 24th and 25th in the hospital. My uncle died of brain cancer (Glioblastoma multiforme). He was an atheist, so he knew that this was final, but he wasn't signed up for cryonics.

We learned about the tumor 2 months ago, and it all happened so fast.. and it's so final.

This is a reminder to those of you who are thinking about signing up for cryonics; don't wait until it's too late.

What is the appropriate etiquette for post frequency? I work on multiple drafts at a time and sometimes they all get finished near each other. I assume 1 post per week is safe enough.

Different responses to challenges seen through the lens of video games. Although I expect the same can be said for character driven stories (rather than say concept driven).

It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge.

Say you take a person with a performance orientation ("Paul") and a person with a mastery orientation ("Matt"). Give them

This is ridiculous. (A $3 item discounted to $2.33 is perceived as a better deal (in this particular experimental setup) than the same item discounted to $2.22, because ee sounds suggest smallness and oo sounds suggest bigness.)

What is the informal policy about posting on very old articles? Specifically, things ported over from OB? I can think of two answers: (a) post comments/questions there; (b) post comments/questions in the open thread with a link to the article. Which is more correct? Is there a better alternative?

Richard Dawkins talking to an astrologer. Best part at 10m28s.

He believes that they are sinning. Mormons have a really complicated dolled-up afterlife, so if he's sticking to doctrine, he probably doesn't actually expect gays as a group to all go to Hell.

Edit: He did a gay guy in the Memory of Earth series too (the plot of which, I later found, is a blatant ripoff of the Book of Mormon). Like the gay guy in Songbird, this one ends up with a woman, although less tragically.

If the tiebreak strategy is "agree with the previous person's guess", then you reach that point immediately. The first person's draw determines everyone's guess: If the second person's draw is the same as the first, then of course they agree, and if not then they're at a 50/50 posterior and thus also agree.

If the tiebreak strategy is "write down your own draw (i.e. maximize the information given to subsequent players)", then information can be collected only so long as the number of each color drawn remains tied or +/-1. As soon as one ... (read more)

A few years back I did an ethics course at university. It very quickly made me realise that both I and most of the rest of the class based our belief in the existence of objective ethics simply on a sense that ethics must exist. When I began to question this idea my teacher asked me what I expected an objective form of ethics to look like. When I said I didn't know she asked if I would agree that a system of ethics would be objective if they could be universally calculated by any none biased, perfectly logical being. This seemed fair enough but the problem... (read more)

P(A)*P(B|A) = P(B)*P(A|B). Therefore, P(A|B) = P(A)*P(B|A) / P(B). Therefore, woe is you should you assign a probability of 0 to B, only for B to actually happen later on; P(A|B) would include a division by 0.

Once upon a time, there was a Bayesian named Rho. Rho had such good eyesight that she could see the exact location of a single point. Disaster struck, however, when Rho accidentally threw a dart, its shaft so thin that its intersection with a perfect dartboard would be a single point, at a perfect dartboard. You see, when you randomly select a point f... (read more)

My life plus the life of a random stranger, for example. If I was doomed to die in a certain fashion but had the chance to save another life (even in a way nobody would ever know about), well, that's a no-brainer for me.

EDIT: Ah, now I see the context. How about the following hypothetical:

I am on a spaceship returning to Earth when all my shipmates die. I realize that I am a carrier for a horrific disease; I will never get sick from it, but I can transmit it to others, of whom 99% will die. Let's furthermore imagine that the people on the ground don't ... (read more)

I am curious as to how many LWers attempt to work out and eat healthy to lengthen life span. Especially among those who have signed up for cryogenics.

I found this interesting and the paper it discusses children's conception of intelligence.

The abstract to the article

Two studies explored the role of implicit theories of intelligence in adolescents' mathematics achievement. In Study 1 with 373 7th graders, the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) predicted an upward trajectory in grades over the two years of junior high school, while a belief that intelligence is fixed (entity theory) predicted a flat trajectory. A mediational model including learning goals, positive beliefs about

A suggestion for the site (or perhaps the Wiki): It would be useful to have a central registry for bets placed by the posters. The purpose is threefold:

• Aid the memory of posters, who might accumulate quite a few bets as time passes.
• Form a record of who has won and lost bets, helping us calibrate our confidences.
• Formalise the practice of saying "I'll take a bet on that", prodding us to take care when posting predictions with probabilities attached. The intention here is to overcome akrasia in the form of throwing out a number and thus signalling our rationality; numbers are important and should be well considered when we use them at all.

How old were you when you became self-aware or achieved a level of sentience well beyond that of an infant or toddler?

I was five years old and walking down the hall outside of my kindergarden classroom and I suddenly realized that I had control over what was happening inside of my mind's eye. This manifested itself by me summoning an image in my head of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

Is it proper to consider that the moment when I became self aware? Does anyone have a similar anecdote?

(This is inspired by Shannon's mention of her child exploring her sense of s... (read more)

One technique I use to internalize certain beliefs is to determine their implied actions, then take those actions while noting that they're the sort of actions I'd take if I "truly" believed. Over time the belief becomes internal and not something I have to recompute every time a related decision comes up. I don't know precisely why this works but my theory is that it has to do with what I perceive my identity to be. Often this process exposes other actions I take which are not in line with the belief. I've used this for things like "animal suffering is actually bad", "FAI is actually important", and "I actually need to practice to write good UIs".

I occasionally see people here repeatedly making the same statement, a statement which appears to be unique to them, and rarely giving any justification for it. Examples of such statements are "Bayes' law is not the fundamental method of reasoning; analogy is" and "timeless decision is the way to go". (These statements may have been originally articulated more precisely than I just articulated them.)

I'm at risk of having such a statement myself, so here, I will make this statement for hopefully the last time, and justify it.

It's often s... (read more)

A soft reminder to always be looking for logical fallacies: This quote was smushed into an opinion piece about OpenGL:

Blizzard always releases Mac versions of their games simultaneously, and they're one of the most successful game companies in the world! If they're doing something in a different way from everyone else, then their way is probably right.

Oops.

Once upon a time I was pretty good at math but either I just stopped liking it or the series of dismal school teachers I had turned me off of it. I ended up taking the social studies/humanities rout and somewhat regretting it. I've studied some foundations of mathematics stuff, symbolic logic and really basic set theory and usually find that I can learn pretty rapidly if I have a good explanation in front of me. What is the best way to teach myself math? I stopped with statistics (High school, advanced placement) and never got to calculus. I don't expect to become a math wiz or anything, I'd just like to understand the science I read better. Anyone have good advice?

Oh! More Asimov, "I, Robot". Here the guy was talking about Friendly AI in 1942.

Feature request, feel free to ignore if it is a big deal or requested before.

When message people back and forth it would be nifty to be able to see the thread. I see glimpses of this feature but it doesn't seem fully implemented.

First: I'm having a very bad brain week; my attempts to form proper-sounding sentences have generally been failing, muddling the communicative content, or both. I want to catch this open thread, though, with this question, so I'll be posting in what is to me an easier way of stringing words together. Please don't take it as anything but that; I'm not trying to be difficult or to display any particular 'tone of voice'. (Do feel free to ask about this; I don't mind talking about it. It's not entirely unusual for me, and is one of the reasons that I'm fairly ... (read more)

Sorry, really late reply. Was just looking over this thread and happened to see this.

Card's writing that involves sexual attraction just comes off as asexual. I never got the sense that the characters were actually sexually attracted to each other; affectionate maybe, but not aroused. It's like the way sexuality looks on tv, not the way people actually experience it. I recall reading Card himself say that he didn't think he was very good at writing about sex or sexual attractions in an interview or something. It might have been in the Folk of the the Fringe book somewhere but I can't find it in my library.

Why was this comment downvoted to -4? Seems to me it's a legitimate question, from a fairly new poster.

It appears as long as I stoop to the correct level of self-depreciation I get enough karma to allow me to keep bashing myself over the head.

Grand Orbital Tables: http://www.orbitals.com/orb/orbtable.htm

In high school and intro chemistry in college, I was taught up to the e and then f orbitals, but they keep going and going from there.

It is not that I object to dramatic thoughts; rather, I object to drama in the absence of thought. Not every scream made of words represents a thought. For if something really is wrong with the universe, the least one could begin to do about it would be to state the problem explicitly. Even a vague first attempt ("Major! These atoms ... they're all in the wrong places!") is at least an attempt to say something, to communicate some sort of proposition that can be checked against the world. But you see, I fear that some screams don't actually commu... (read more)

How much of Eliezer's 2001 FAI document is still advocated? eg. Wisdom tournaments and bugs in the code.

Something has been bothering me ever since I began to try to implement many of the lessons in rationality here. I feel like there needs to be an emotional reinforcement structure or a cognitive foundation that is both pliable and supportive of truth seeking before I can even get into the why, how and what of rationality. My successes in this area have been only partial but it seems like the better well structured the cognitive foundation is the easier it is to adopt, discard and manipulate new ideas.

I understand that is likely a fairly meta topic and woul... (read more)

Possibly dumb question but... can anyone here explain to me the difference between Minimum Message Length and Minimum Description Length?

I've looked at the wikipedia pages for both, and I'm still not getting it.

Thanks.

Yudkowsky briefly addressed moral luck:

Let's say someone gravely declares, of some moral dilemma [...] that there is no moral answer; both options are wrong and blamable; whoever faces the dilemma has had poor moral luck. Fine, let's suppose this is the case: then when you cannot be innocent, justified, or praiseworthy, what will you choose anyway?

Lately I've actually been thinking that maybe we should split up morality into two concepts, and deal with them separately: one referring to moral sentiments, and another referring to what we actually do. It... (read more)

Question for all of you: Is our subconscious conscious? That is, are parts of us conscious? "I" am the top-level consciousness thinking about what I'm typing right now. But all sorts of lower-level processes are going on below "my" consciousness. Are any of them themselves conscious? Do we have any way of predicting or testing whether they are?

Tononi's information-theoretic "information integration" measure (based on mutual information between components) could tell you "how conscious" a well-specified circuit ... (read more)

[Parent at -2.] Is the advice to not waste time and effort on stuff you don't need really that bad? (Hypothetical, under the assumption that you really don't need it; if you do need it occasionally, in the majority of cases it'll be enough to relearn directly on demand, rather than supporting for perfection's sake.)