If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
I’m asking after advice. Here’s my predicament;
I will soon fall over dead from social deprivation. I’m only exaggerating somewhat. I’m living in my hometown, where for unspecified reasons all previous contacts are lost to me. I am unlikely to be able to move for months, at least. I live far from rationalist circles. I’ve decided to try out the study hall to fill the gap a little (yet to do this, time for bed). I will also probably try to forge new circles by going to town and searching for groups to join that are at least adjacent to my interests. This feels (flagging for overconfidence) unlikely to work here, it’s a smallish town. Nice, but still, not academically active in a suitable fashion, that I've noticed.
There are specifics to group-finding in meatspace I am able to work out fine, so I don’t need help there. But that is the extent of my creativity. Am I missing something glaringly obvious? Please tell me I am.
EDIT: Issue solved! Thanks! :D
Ask rationalists for Skype conversations! I'll set one up with you if you wish!
I think that the psychedelic images that DeepDream produces today are just the start of what we'll see with this kind of technology. Wrote a bit about the ways in which it could be used for increasing image quality, putting artists out of work, and of course, generating porn.
http://kajsotala.fi/2015/07/deepdream-today-psychedelic-images-tomorrow-unemployed-artists/
This is one third request, one third challenge, and one third curiosity.
LW likes to discuss game theory. I'd like to see an analysis of the Greek-Troika negotiations over the last few months from the game theory perspective that looks at whether the sides used particular tactics (e.g. pre-commitment) and how well did they turn out. Note that the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has written a book on game theory.
A bunch of interesting people, starting with Peter Singer, are discussing effective altruism.
What's next for Greece and the rest of EU? What are your predictions?
Recently came across Valiant's A Theory of the Learnable. Basically, it covers a method of machine learning in the following way: if there's a collection of objects which either possess some property P or do not, then you can teach a machine to recognize this with arbitrarily small error simply by presenting it with randomly selected objects and saying whether they possess P. The learner may give false positives, but will not give a false negative. Perhaps the following passage best illustrates the concept:
... (read more)I seek a pointer to material which may help me with a problem I am having. I have noticed that certain claims make me angry and defensive. I find this troubling because while I am convinced that a subset of those claims is wrong, I am unsure regarding the complement. Nevertheless, because I become angry and defensive, I simply cannot evaluate claims which belong in the complement. (Well, rather, I "evaluate" those claims by knocking down arguments in their favor and declaring victory over my opponents which is not particularly helpful in finding the truth.)
What are the origins of this interesting video that was clearly stolen from elsewhere?
I am about to come into possession of a house of 6 rooms for at least 6 months. The future of the property is to be knocked down and rebuilt into a larger house for sale at a profit (this is an almost definite thing for the future). My goal is to make the most amount of profit in the time it takes to submit plans for a new house and get approval from my local bodies for building works.
My requirements:
- Not too much effort (my time is worth something too) or effort tha
... (read more)I'm probably completely confused, but is there any reason that Greg Egan's rebuttal* to Dust Theory does not also apply to any Big World scenario?
*Q5
Does anyone know what's going on with Robert Freitas's book series Nanomedicine? I've been waiting for the third and fourth volumes to come out forever.
How much karma does one need to make a top-level post or meetup announcement? A new user wants to announce a new meetup in Kiev. If you want to help them out, you can upvote their comment.
A pretty awesome definition of the word "derp" in the context of Bayesian inference.
Followed by a suggested declension of "derp" as an irregular verb:
Reverse intelligence is not stupidity.
Just saw If You Buy The Stuff No One Else Likes, You Just May Be A “Harbinger Of Failure"
And wondered: If these persons consistently fail can it be that theyjust live up to their inner bruce from "Stuck In The Middle With Bruce"?
It would be great if someone used text analysis on transcripts of political debates and compiled a list of terms used as 'the worst arguments in the world', annotated with central meanings.
It would run into many problems, as people would argue about definitions and exceptions, but the very frequency of usage of specific words would more or less indicate their mindkilling potential.
I wrote a pair of essays (and a shorter summary of both) on heroic responsibility, and how it could serve as a strong counterpart to empathy as a one-two punch for making good moral decisions:
http://aarongertler.net/heroism/
Seemed Less-Wrong-ish, though my "heroic responsibility" is written for a different audience than Eliezer's, and is a bit less harsh/powerful as a result.
I don't want to start a blog yet I would like to put articles online. I don't want to worry about things like a blogs name, layout or colors. But I would like to put an article somewhere and then share it on Reddit, LW, Facebook... and the site should preferably look reasonably professional (say, black on white, magazine like fonts etc.) so if you would write someone serious, say, Bryan Caplan, a comment saying "I disagree with some points in your article, here is my article to explain" the would not feel shamed linking to it in their own answer ... (read more)
One quantitative finance fund to rule them all?
Machine learning specialists outperform prediction markets and subject matter experts Yet, the quantitative finance industry eagerly laps up former asx employees who supposedly have privellaged knowledge of exchange architecture (they don’t, it’s all published anyway and that which isn’t is privy to freedom of information requests), particularly high frequency trading firms.
I suspect this practice may have more to do with regulatory capture instead. Conspiracy theory aside and assuming there isn’t a meritious... (read more)
Whenever the conjunction fallacy is brought up, it always irks me, because it doesn't seem like a real fallacy. In the example given by Rationality A to Z, "[...] found that experimental subjects consdiered it less likely that a strong tennis player would lose the first set than he would lose the first set but win the match."
There's two valid interpretations of this statement here:
1) The fallacious interpretation: P(Lose First Set) < P(Lose First Set and Win Match)
2) P(Lose First Set) < P(Win Match | Lose First Set), which is a valid and n... (read more)
Looks like it has been addressed in Conjunction Controversy (Or, How They Nail It Down):
I see deep dreaming as a new, big and growing thing. I am surrounded by people who not only want to try it out but have the capacity to do it. As in the programming ability to fiddle. That puts me in a uniquely exciting place to see several deep dreaming experiments popping up all over facebook. My question is - where is it going? What is it leading to?
Do you have a good prediction of what comes next out of deep dreaming RNN systems? I believe its something big, and with the confidence and ability to predict it; it might be possible to see into the... (read more)
I'm interested in increasing the chance of happening upon personally interesting content on Lesswrong - represented by my 'saved' posts.
Based on my saved pages, it is clear that the content is heavily biased towards particular high profile users
I am interested in accessing more data on the karma of Lesswrong users without going to each user profile.
To answer who are the the most reliable LW users, I intend to see if I can predict whether a particular LW user will post something of interest to me based on their karma/post or another metric beyond the aggregate karmic data available in the sidebar.
Can you help me answer the questions that I'm interested in?
How does one overcome the illusion of control over others? I feel like I think a lot about people I have crushes on because I feel like I can affect their decision to like me more than I can influence others.
Reposting from crazy ideas thread (hopefully someone will comment):
Does Dust Theory imply that every time you go to sleep, or lose mental grasp of your surroundings, your reality takes a somewhat different shape? After all, it's only your experiences that create your coherent world. I think it would be similar to the Autoverse's 'removal' of Permutation City.
EDIT: Hmm, no, there would just be a slow degradation of consciousness. Nothing that would explain my memories of dreaming last night and taking a ninety-degree turn back into reality upon waking up; that dream would have become my reality. So I'm fairly confident Dust Theory is false, because of the sheer unnecessary baggage my reality appears to have.
I recently read this post from a couple years back, and I do not understand the point being made at all.
... (read more)At lesswrong.com/user/Clarity/liked/ I can only see whole threads I have upvoted, not all the comments. Is there any way to find those other than bookmarking the permalinks?
It sounds like open borders are a sound idea excepting the danger of importing conflicts from around the world. Reasonable?
The other night I went to an event and found the people I was talking to really boring. A friend suggested that when he has felt the same in the past, it was because he was boring himself, ha ha. Am I boring?
Conversation is a team sport, with a minimum of two players. A "boring" person can be characterized as someone who does not contribute interesting anecdotes or facts to a conversation, or asks no interesting questions. Like most team sports, a bad player can be "carried" to victory by sufficiently good team. So while it's certainly possible that you were talking to boring people, a more actionable and probably more rewarding point of view to take is that you were being boring, and strive to learn techniques for making a conversation more engaging for you and your team.
Open question - what is going well and what could go better?