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As usual we will be running an unconference style gathering where participants create the sessions. Six wall-sized daily planners are filled by the attendees with 100+ workshops, talks and activities of their own devising. Most are prepared upfront, but some are just made up on the spot when inspiration hits.

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Looking forward to seeing you there!

I'm really sorry if this breaks some kind of subredit rules (I could only find the normal reddit rules down right, so I'm assuming only those apply).

I'm new to this subreddit, but I'm an old fan of hpmor, I've read the Sequences (online, not the AI to Zombie one that was published as a book) and I'm more or less on the path to improve myself on the rationality side. When I have the time, I also enjoy some good old rational fanfiction or literature. I've just recently started and finished Friendship is Optimal (I know, I should have read that sooner, but really... Ponies?) and it was good. Not perfect, but good.

And then at the end, at the Author's Afterwords, I've found a denigration of MIRI and LessWrong community this website, and saying this was upsetting is an euphemismus.

Now I'm doing the wrong, irrational thing, and I'm coming here to have some confirmation bias, that all that stuff is wrong or there's some misunderstanding... I just couldn't find stuff online about this.

I don't think that even if it were true, it would invalidate anything about rationality and the lessons learned there, I know that people are people, I never thought of Eliezer Yudkowsky as a messiah, at most I've thought of him as the one who has opened my eyes about what rationality was, and for that I am extremely thankful. The bit about AI and trying to save the world were a positive plus, but nothing I considered impactful. Maybe in the next two or three generations. I thought it was all too optimistic, to be honest.

But still, I would like to know what the people here would say about this scandal.

Curious how top forecasters predict the future? Want to begin forecasting but aren’t sure where to start? Looking for grounded future-focused discussions of today’s most important topics? Join Metaculus every Forecast Friday!

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In this session, Metaculus Pro Forecaster Jared Leibowich will lead discussion on forecasting life expectancy in G7 countries. (A Metaculus question from the ongoing Forecasting Our World in Data Tournament.)

Jared Leibowich, is an accomplished forecaster: He won The Economist's 2022 "The World Ahead" contest and took first place in Good Judgment's "In the News" contests in 2021 and 2022. Jared started forecasting in 2020 and has since gone full time, contributing predictions with Metaculus, Samotsvety, and Swift Centre. He also offers tutoring to emerging forecasters and shares his insights with AI and vaccine companies. You can reach him here.

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To join, enter Gather Town and use the Metaculus portal. We'll see you there!

This question is based on a case that happened long ago that I read in a book of unexplained mysteries. It was a couple of years back, so I can't reliably remember any names. This is what I do remember;

a young man (in his late teens) went travelling with a group of 5 friends. He returned alone, when asked what happened he gave an extremely detailed, creepypasta-like story about how a 'monster' appeared and ate his friends one by one, and he saw and heard everything from up close, going as far as describing the exact length of each of his friend's screams of pain. When he was asked to describe this monster, he just described and drew pictures of the main cartoon character from a new family-orientated animated show at the time, introduced weeks before the incident, and airing in his State only. Interestingly, this character was also a dragon (a fictional species).

The show would air weekly, and on the day of the incident, from my research, it had aired three times.

The sole surviving witness described the height of the monster accurately to the character in the show. In the opening lyrics of the show, he is described as being ''ten feet tall''. The sole surviving witness described the height as ''about ten feet tall''.

He stuck to his story throughout his life until he was old and died, and had reportedly suffered long-lasting nervous breakdowns because people didn't believe him. He attempted to track down anyone claiming to have also seen this monster/character, contacting the administrators and members of forums and websites dedicated to paranormal phenomena (at the time of the incident, the internet was decades away, so he must have been in his 50's or 60's at the time of contacting people across the internet). He also reportedly became an alcoholic and drug addict after the incident because his life was changed due to his and his friend's experience with seeing a cartoon character appear in reality, and then have it chase and kill his friends one by one.

The drawing he had made and signed of what he saw strongly resembled the character, except that it looked less friendly and more evil.

From what I recall, only 1 body was found, despite a massive search by the military.

His story doesn't match the press stories. In the original press release, a day after the incident, he says he and his friends became separated and he didn't see them again. Later on, he published his story to paranormal magazines, explaining that the journalists at the time had told him to omit the part about the monster. Reportedly, he immediately told the monster story to the families of the missing boys, as well as to one of the search and rescue authorities, who believed him.

Questions

Why would he say / imply a fictional character was behind the deaths of his friends?

Why was he so obsessed throughout his life? I've known teenagers who lost friends in a car crash who are now in their forties, and they are not obsessed about what happened to the point of requesting the telephone numbers of anyone who had survived a car crash, for example.

I'm writing a series on "symbols and substance": it's heavily based on the map-territory distinction, but I'm targeting it toward people who are outside of this community. Basically I'm highlighting the type of mistake we make when we confuse the map for the territory (confuse symbols for their substance) in any given area of life. I've aimed to make this content heavy in practical examples so the uninitiated can quickly pick up on these ideas. Here's what I've posted so far:

• We live in a world of symbols; just about everything we deal with in everyday life is meant to represent something else. (Introduction)
• Surrogation is a mistake we're liable to make at any time, in which we confuse a symbol for its substance. (Part 1: Surrogation)
• You should stop committing surrogation whenever and wherever you notice it, but there’s more than one way to do this. (Part 2: Responses to surrogation)

Please let me know what you think. If there's interest in this content, I'll keep linking the upcoming posts as I continue to publish them.

My mother has generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) that is partially controlled with medication.

​

She frequently gets irrational fears.

​

Yesterda, she was scared that the air conditioner in her relatively new, well function care would break down and that she would die of heat prostration on the 45 minute drive home over well frequented roads on hot, but not dangerously hot weather despite having a cell phone and water bottle in the car.

​

Is there any experience with trying to help people like her become Bayesianist as a way to reduce such fears?

I am a new-ish Aspiring Rationalist and am working my way through Yudkowsky's A-Z Essays, and didn't quite understand that Chapter. If anyone has a link or something to give me a second perspective or even wording, that would be helpful.

I understand that it's important to know about the importance of rationality training, x-risk and s-risk reduction, and cryonics. I was wondering what things I might have missed.

(I already made a post just like this on the Slate Star Codex subreddit, but I think the responders missed some things, and I'm wondering if LWers have more to add)

I am trying to make an informed decision about whether to go on a vacation or not. I want to do this in a rational manner, both for the object-level goal of deciding how to spend next summer and for the meta-level goal of improving my decision process.

The direct costs of a vacation are fairly straightforward to calculate: travel expenses, dinning/activities, unpaid leave (if applicable), etc. Assume for now that these are low.

The benefits of a vacation are mostly intangible, but also not hard to enumerate: spending time with friends/family, accumulating memorable experiences, broadening one's worldview, some other things specific to my situation. I assign value to these according to my specific objective function.

What I'm struggling with is figuring out is how to account for the opportunity cost. Given a fixed amount of vacation time, would there be other things I could do by taking the time off work but staying home? Some examples that occur to me:

• Work a side job, thereby getting double salary for my three weeks of vacation. (Money is currently tight, so a one-time injection of funds might be weighted more strongly for me than it's pure financial value)
• Spend the time trying to improve my long-term prospects (e.g. searching for a better job, professional development, "Quadrant 2" in the Wait-but-why procrastination matrix, etc).
• Spend the time volunteering or contributing to other causes I don't normally have time for

The problem is that the space of possible "opportunities" that could replace a vacation is vast. Does the value of a block of time even converge to a value? I guess that question could also apply to life in general, but for now let's stick to the concrete example of 3 weeks of vacation.

hey ya'll, I would especially like audio content in Spanish, French, or Portuguese

Hallo all! The link I'd puit up before doesn't work anymore, so heres a new one for those who are interested: https://agora-2866.nodechef.com/

The idea behind Agora is to allow large numbers of people to talk about complicated ideas and reach meaningful conclusions. At the surface, it works kind of like reddits comment section, with reply trees - but mine has a much better presentation, I think, and I have many more features planned that reddit does not. :P

I've been working on Agora off and on for about 4 years now, and I think it's coming along pretty well. Right now I'm trying to optimize the UI, so any feedback on that would be very welcome. Also! Feel free to ask any questions you might have, I know I missed a thing or two.

There is an interesting [Chomsky video] (https://youtu.be/J3fhKRJNNTA?t=51) where he quotes the argument "If you believe that there is no freedom of the will, why bother presenting an argument" made by William James.

Although it seems to be a very simple argument I can't seem to refute it satisfactorily to my mind.

I was hoping for a bit of an alternative perspective on it.

Title is the TL;DR but first here is full disclosure:

As the username suggests, I'm high. This is no excuse for being crass, of course, but please keep that in mind if you want to chat. Also, english is not my first language. Feel free to point out any of my errors.

edit: Also, I talk too much. Feel free to ignore it all and just tell me your story.

I can trace a somewhat clear path of the last steps I took before finding LW/Rationalism and it felt weirdly like being pulled into a whirlpool and reaching a conclusion at the same time.

Some guy on reddit said something about the malcolm gladwell podcast that made me interested enough to look it up. The whole season I felt like he was sending a strong message of that seemed to resonate with what I had inside me this whole time but had never found it in such concentrations (this came at a weird moment in my life, which I can expand on if anyone is interested), I went to look for him on youtube and found some very interesting interviews interviews¹ ².

I love audiobooks (which I also only found out about ~4 years ago) so after I was done with Hahari's Sapiens I downloaded Misbehaving that talks about behavioural economics and goes into some detail into what Kahneman & Tversky did. By then I was having this really weird crisis where I felt I was, in the words of the author, more like a 'econ' than everyone else around me*.

After watching this video I found this comment using a youtube extension that shows reddit threads instead of the comment section. I'm looking into getting checked for ADHD because I've always had a hard time reading long non-entertaining texts so I didn't even look twice at the LW site (I didn't even realize it was a community and not just a blog) before listening to HPMOR, which I loved. I mean, I told my friends and SO that this harry was in some ways more like myself than everyone else was.

Also, some time before that, when a gay friend got beaten on the street, I came to the conclusion that hate speech exists not only because silence gives way to it but also because joking and downplaying it also helped to create a suitable environment. So I decided to speak up more often, to ask people to explain a dumb sexist or homophobic joke, all using my easy smile and friendly talk to defend people that didn't have access to that. I try not to push too much, tho, just enough to create the discomfort and then I stop. In the very least people will eventually stop to say that kind of thing when I'm around.

I was reaching the same conclusion in regards to poverty and world wrongness, at the time I found the Revisionist History Podcast I was considering very hard to give that priority and stop being lazy. I planned to research more before doing something but education seemed to be the answer. By then I was already listening to HPMOR and I had an idea that to this day is still on the plate: some kind of local group that promoted education related to rationalism. One other idea was to participate in some kind of humanitarian group but honestly I didn't do any of those because I want to learn more first, this is all way too interesting and seemly important.

Some of my sources of knowledge so you could gouge how much I know about rationalism: I also listened to the sequences (via the podcast), some ~30 episodes of the bayesian conspiracy and any given number of read essays and wiki pages. Sadly that hugely increased my backlog and led me to feel pressured, now I'm listening to Worm so I can chill a bit and between it and HPMOR I'm realizing I should have read more books on this kind of subgenre (like after I read Ender's Game some years ago lol), it's totally my thing!

*- That led me to find a psychoanalyst, which didn't get to help with that because 3~4 sessions in I found out about LW lol I'm sure it was also very weird for her that I show up like I had a realization and then suddenly I had names and proper definitions for all the ideas I was trying so fucking hard to describe and get it across to her.

So... this is kind of my origin story, is it weird? Is THIS weird? :p Please, tell me yours and don't feel like writing this much just because I did. I'd appreciate any answer to this thread regardless of length or, honestly, content hahah Let's talk!

edit: Some things I felt I had left out.

Hello LessWrongLounge, hope you're all having a wonderful day. First post here; I am a current high school student, preparing to enter university, and was hoping for some input on which courses or areas of study I should enter. A bit of context and information about myself;

I am Canadian, attending my cities local university

Due to various economic factors my entire first 4 years of education will be covered. In essence, I walk away with a Bachelors and no debt.

I am heavily interested in, and heavily involved with the Arts community, which is also quite large in my city. I have been performing with several theatrical troupes for the past year (have consistently been involved in at least one production since July), am working at our local regional theatre in the Box Office (after an internship), and have a very natural and elevated talent towards acting, directing, stage management, and dramaturgy.

Lastly, high school has almost killed me in how ridiculous it has been, causing me quite a bit of stress and anger in my life. I feel I have partially lost much of my passion for learning, betterment, achieving goals, and all around rational drive and motivation. Thankfully, I have recently become aware of that, and am now working towards relighting some of my previous interests.

Which brings me to the question of course loads. I truly do need some time off from the education system, but entirely intend to return to it at some point. I love learning in general, and in an ideal world I could continue to return to university, learning every subject possible. I even have distant thoughts of becoming an educator or professor at some point (naturally a good leader, well at explaining, patient) Due to the path my life is currently set upon however, and my recent experiences (both positive and negative), I will be taking a Major in Theatre. My university offers one of the better theatre programs in Canada, tuition is low, etc. However, the arts do not finance well.

My current thought process I have been mulling over is to achieve a Minor in Computer Science (strong love of computers, the general coding/programming/problem solving logic aspect, focus on website development & eCommerce) alongside various other Maths, Philosophy, Business courses, and then immediately upon graduation move towards a Master of Business Administration (Also enjoy business, financing, etc). Other areas of interest include History (to a ridiculous amount), Mathematics, Philosophy, Psychology, Economics, Statistics. My question itself would be, which Minors, Majors, or courses would you recommend I take to make myself as versatile and appealing, while enabling me to further continue my education as time progresses.

I find it is not a debate of 'Course that makes a lot of money' versus 'course that I am truly passionate about', but finding the optimal order of education that fund my continuing education towards subjects that interest me, or enable me to fulfill my passions and interests (board game deisgn + game theory, writing, etc) What are your thoughts on Majors versus Minors, Bachelor versus Graduate, etc. Some additional Information; due to university restrictions, I can only major in the same faculty. Under arts, I can double-major in Theatre and Economics, Statistics, Philosophy, History.) My university does not offer a business minor, and you cannot double-major with a BBA. Additionally, the other university in my city offers a more well-renowned Business program.

I thank you for taking the time to read my article, and appreciate any responses or discussion we can bring up. I will do my best to elaborate further on any points or questions you may have. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.

I had an interesting experience yesterday; I met this girl and we started chatting. It was quite smooth sailing; she opened the convo with "no I won't tell you my three sizes", and from there we hit it off; she said "she liked me", I was a little surprised, and replied with "I think you're a very friendly person". After getting to know each other a little better, she said: "I think we're quite compatible". It seemed a little off, and easier than I expected. However, fledgling that I am I wasn't one to refuse an easier journey. I just went with the flow; hey, if it's become easier, then who am I to complain? I'm not one of those masochists that likes a tough journey.  
 
She said she was a "bad girl" and enjoyed NSFW topics and role-playing. She offered me to try out RP. I agreed, and left her to the script; I was a neophyte, not yet introduced to the world of role playing. We started slowly, then eventually went to making out in the RP. It was quite the blissful experience.  
 
After the entire ordeal, I was happy and elated, while she dropped a bombshell; "my username and profile picture do not reflect my actual gender".  
 
My heart was a turmoil of emotions, as I let the implications of that sink in.  
 
Damn it! I should have noticed all the warning signs: "No I won't tell you my three sizes", "I like you", "I think we're quite compatible". What kind of girl goes to sexting within a few minutes of meeting each other. Alas, I failed as a rationalist; I wasn't able to beore confused by fiction than by reality. There was an unease in my heart — a slight sense of incongruity. To my own detriment, I ignored it. I shall forever live with this scar.  
 
Give me back my innocence.
Give me back my purity.
T_T

I've posted here once before, asking this question the wrong way, because at the time I didn't know what I wanted.

Now that I think I have a better understanding of my goal systems, I want to ask: Can I get a cluster of links to places where I can get help- catching up, I suppose?

I get the feeling, reading modern posts by Eliezer and others, that I'm a few steps behind the news, since I've spent so long reading, rereading, and integrating the sequences and other content. Along with my own research and asking others, I wanted to post here (Lacking knowledge of someplace more appropriate) to gather more things to read- as, I suppose, "follow-up" to the sequences.

I'm looking for resources and links and content which will help me become better acquainted with the modern environment surrounding not only AGI research, both specifically alignment and otherwise, and surrounding the modern rationalist and EA movements- the blogs, websites, and locuses of content that will help me in that regard.

Sorry for the long-winded post. I get nervous when I post anywhere, and when I get nervous I type more.

Tl;Dr: Looking for links to good followups to sequences, esp. as regarding: AGI, Cognitive Science, & Effective Altruism.

I have one trick, though I haven't tried it out yet (refer question again to understand the irony :P):
Make an overarching goal for yourself. Thereafter, connect what needs to be done to that goal.

Eg: Wish to be healthy and run around with my kids and grand-kids and not be limited by sickness, which I am prone to.
So, the next time I have to do 3 situps which I can't bring myself to do, I can look at the intrinsic value that it has - bringing me closer to that goal of being able to live a fun life.
I guess that's one trick which helps emotional beings make more rational decisions - a reason with some emotion and big future outcome attached, as opposed to just a standard "practical" reason.

=-09875643UP========= nmbbn

Hint: Don't forget to use Occam's razor.

There was a newspaper recommended on Slatestarcodex and I can't remember what it was called or where the link to their website is. Anybody here who does know?

Thanks!

You know that old argument: "X is overpowered!" "No it's not!" "Yes it is!"

It seems to go on forever, in practically every competitive gaming forum. Until now. Thought you guys might like this.

http://forum.arcanewonders.com/index.php?topic=16759.15

Apparently there was a peaceful protest by some political activism organization called Democracy Spring in washington dc and hundreds of people got arrested. What do you guys make of this?

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/11/473874785/hundreds-protest-gerrymandering-campaign-finance-laws-on-capitols-steps