lincolnquirk

Karma: 1,710

lincolnquirk 30 Mar 2011 19:35 UTC
2 points
in reply to: EchoingHorror’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
Wait, did you get an email? I submitted, and haven’t received any form of confirmation, not even an automatic one.

lincolnquirk 1 Apr 2011 20:33 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Sniffnoy’s comment on: Rationality Boot Camp
I believe what they’re trying to get at here is “tell us about something you care about beyond yourself”. Evidence of passion, if you will.

I doubt you’ll lose points if they come up with a different expected value for your project than you do, or if the project already exists, or so on.

I prefixed my ideas with “these are some ideas I want to work on”. I listed certifiable programming languages, friendly AI, and improved teaching techniques as my three ideas, and gave a paragraph or two of explanation per idea for why these would make the world a better place.

lincolnquirk 3 Apr 2011 15:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: prase’s comment on: An Anchoring Experiment
I suppose the correct value is probably 16 million.

lincolnquirk 5 Apr 2011 20:29 UTC
11 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Hi, I’m Lincoln. I am 25; I live and work in Cambridge, MA. I currently build video games but I’m going to start a Ph.D program in Computer Science at the local university in the fall.

I identified rationality as a thing to be achieved ever since I knew there was a term for it. One of the minor goals I had since I was about 15 was devising a system of morality which fit with my own intuitions but which was consistent under reflection (but not in so many words). The two thought experiments I focused on were abortion and voting. I didn’t come up with an answer, but I knew that such a morality was a thing I wanted—consistency was important to me.

I ran across Eliezer’s work 907 days ago reading a Hacker News post about the AI-box experiment, and various other Overcoming Bias posts that were submitted over the years. I didn’t immediately follow through on that stuff.

But I became aware of SIAI about 10 months ago, when rms on Hacker News linked an interesting post about the Visiting Fellows program at SIAI.

I think I had a “click” moment: I immediately saw that AI was both an existential risk and major opportunity, and I wanted to work on these things to save the world. I followed links and ended up at LW; I didn’t immediately understand the connection between AI and rationality, but they both looked interesting and useful, so I bookmarked LW.

I immediately sent in an application to the Visiting Fellows program, thinking “hey, I should figure out how to do this”—I think it was Jasen who responded and asked me by email to summarize the purpose of SIAI and how I thought I could contribute. I wrote the purpose summary, but got stuck on how to contribute. I had barely read any of the Sequences at that time and had no idea how I could be useful. For those reasons (as well as a healthy dose of akrasia), I gave up on my application at that time.

Somewhere in there I found HP:MoR (perhaps via TVTropes?), saw the author was “Less Wrong” and made the connection.

Since then, I have been inhaling the Sequences; in the last month I’ve been checking the front page almost daily. I applied to the Rationality Boot Camp.

I’m very far from being a rationalist—I can see that my rationality skills are really quite poor, but I at least identify as a student of rationality.
What links here?
- People who want to save the world by Giles (15 May 2011 0:44 UTC; 5 points)

lincolnquirk 14 Apr 2011 14:57 UTC
6 points
on: Book reviews
Ooh. I recently read The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (originally published in 2007); I read the 2nd ed. (2010).

Thesis: the world tends to be defined by high-impact events which are very hard to predict. They happen a lot more than people give them credit for.

A few examples are trends in finance, bestsellers in publishing, and the impact of the internet. Taleb observes that people tend to have ridiculous hindsight (and other) biases with respect to these sorts of events.

The only real recommendation in the book is to categorize situations you’re trying to predict into four “quadrants”: binary outcomes vs. outcomes with magnitude, and normally-distributed probabilities vs. non-normally-distributed probabilities. Taleb terms the normally-distributed region “Mediocristan” and the non-normally-distributed region “Extremistan”. When you have non-normal distribution, and outcomes are based on magnitude, that is the “fourth quadrant”—where you have to beware of black swans, and know that you’re going to have trouble making good predictions.

He talks about the probabilistic model in Mediocristan, where the Gaussian / normal distribution applies—it tails off exponentially, rapidly reducing the probability of outliers to miniscule, so it’s much easier to rely on the absence of outliers. And he gives dire warnings against applying the normal distribution to the Fourth Quadrant, though many do anyway—for example, the Black-Scholes option valuation equation models the price of stocks as varying using a Gaussian distribution, and (in the 2nd ed.) makes the case that this was the reason for many derivatives-based financial firms collapsing in 2008.

It’s a fun read for students of rationality because he talks a lot about empiricism and biases. One idea he emphasized is the “ludic fallacy”—“ludic” meaning “game-like”, and referring to people relying on excessively simplified models to make predictions, or thinking too much inside the box. Wikipedia has a better summary of this idea. It’s something I don’t see talked about much here, though I think it applies to rationality.

lincolnquirk 9 May 2011 17:30 UTC
8 points
in reply to: XFrequentist’s comment on: Main site karma requirement for posting broken?
20 karma so you can post. Empty history so you can keep it in long-term storage without risking losing karma, so that if you need to post on short notice, you don’t have to wait for something else to be upvoted. Fresh account in case anonymity is required.

lincolnquirk 13 May 2011 22:13 UTC
14 points
on: Upcoming meet-ups: Buenos Aires, Minneapolis, Ottawa, Edinburgh, Cambridge, London, DC
As noted, the Boston / Cambridge meetup group has a meeting approximately every other Sunday at 2pm in Kendall. This week we also have a bonus activity.

As LW user Chronophasiac describes it:

I and a few other Less Wrong readers are trying to make fire.

No, seriously.

We’re building the “technology tree” of humanity from the bottom up, both as a bit of fun and an exercise in group problem-solving. I’ve been experimenting with basic stone tools and rope. The next step is to start a fire, using nothing but what we can make ourselves out of pre-technological raw materials. So far our best bet is to make a bow drill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_drill

We’d like to invite the Cambridge LW meetup group to participate in our first attempt, tentatively scheduled for this Sunday at 4pm to coincide with the normally scheduled meetup.

I’m soliciting the meetup group for location suggestions. We would like to carry out this activity in a heavily wooded area. We’ll need access to many different kinds of plants: young saplings to make rope, birch trees to make kindling, and so on. We’d also like it to be T-accessible and as close to Cambridge as possible.

This is a rain-or-shine event. I’ll be bringing a cordless drill and pre-made wooden parts, plus tinder and lighter fluid. Fire WILL be made, even if we have to cheat.

lincolnquirk 19 May 2011 12:08 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Upcoming meet-ups: Buenos Aires, Minneapolis, Ottawa, Edinburgh, Cambridge, London, DC
Well, we failed pretty badly.

The friction methods appear horrendously difficult to actually implement. We were unable to produce an ember with an electric drill, using a dry pine dowel and board.

What’s our next plan? Someone at the meetup suggested making a lens to focus the sunlight out of clear ice. I think we might have a shot at getting that to work, though we’d have to freeze the ice ourselves.

lincolnquirk 6 Jun 2011 19:45 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Kevin’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Update: I got into Rationality Boot Camp, which is starting tomorrow. Thanks for posting that on HN! I wouldn’t (probably) be here otherwise.

How to enjoy being wrong

lincolnquirk27 Jul 2011 5:48 UTC

30 points

13 comments5 min readLW link

lincolnquirk 28 Aug 2011 20:27 UTC
15 points
on: List of Donors, Fall 2011
I gave $1000 to the Singularity Institute after completing Rationality Mega-Camp. They seem to be a legitimate organization full of smart people doing very important work, and they convinced me of two things: they are working on valuable projects today, and they could be doing a lot more valuable stuff with more money.

lincolnquirk 14 Oct 2011 13:16 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Improving My Writing Style
Ooh, my turn to try a rewrite of the first paragraph.

Consequentialism: “We should choose actions based on their probable consequences.”

Ever since that idea was formulated, it has earned a surprising amount of criticism. The most interesting objections are ones which argue that consequentialist reasoning appears to endorse bad decisions, either in the long run or as an effect of collective action.

lincolnquirk 16 Nov 2011 1:10 UTC
15 points
on: Rationality Dojo Examples?
I was at the Rationality Mega-Camp. I and some others blogged about the experience here: http://rationalitybootcamp.blogspot.com/

We had 3-6 hours of daily rationality sessions:

1) basic rationality—cognitive bias, applying Bayes’ theorem, microeconomics, 5-second skills

2) social effectiveness—fashion training, rejection therapy, persuasion

3) fixing bugs in your emotions—cognitive behavioral therapy, internal family systems, nonviolent communication

4) brain contortions—memory, meditation, drawing, talking with Michael Vassar :)

5) long-term effectiveness—business and entrepreneurship, planning and thinking strategically, high-impact philanthropy

Beyond the sessions, we had a number of people who were just really great rationalists spending time together talking about interesting topics. It was a very social, communal environment.

lincolnquirk 16 Nov 2011 6:06 UTC
2 points
in reply to: XFrequentist’s comment on: Rationality Dojo Examples?
I’ve talked with several of the other RBCers a few times since the camp, and we became close enough that I would be welcome to visit any of them (I think) whenever I wanted. I’m not currently continuing any explicit rationality training, though I apply a lot of the stuff I learned on a fairly regular basis. I am not sure to what degree RBC affected the trajectory of my life—I seem to already be more successful than I was before, but don’t know whether I can attribute that.

lincolnquirk 29 Nov 2011 23:44 UTC
4 points
on: Facing the Intelligence Explosion discussion page
Re: Preface

spelling: immanent → imminent

lincolnquirk 24 Dec 2011 7:08 UTC
12 points
on: Holiday giving thread
Donated 700 to SI this holiday season, and 300 to AMF (givewell’s top choice) on behalf of my grandparents. Not eligible for match.
What links here?
- Holiday giving thread by Kaj_Sotala (23 Dec 2011 11:09 UTC; 17 points)

lincolnquirk 24 Dec 2011 7:41 UTC
4 points
in reply to: David_Gerard’s comment on: Spend Money on Ergonomics
I have used a kinesis contoured for 4 years or so. It uses Cherry Brown switches. They’re not especially clicky, but they have long travel and they have served me relatively well ergonomically over the last few years. The kinesis also has a “click” sound it plays on every key press (optional, but recommended).
What links here?
- arundelo's comment on Spend Money on Ergonomics by Kevin (27 Dec 2011 2:38 UTC; 0 points)

lincolnquirk 28 Dec 2011 5:41 UTC
22 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Singularity Institute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far
FWIW, the “Future Plans” list seems to me somewhat understating the value of a donation. I realize it’s fairly accurate in that it represents the activities of SI. Yet it seems like it could be presented better.

For example, the first item is “hold the Summit”. But I happen to know that the Summit generally breaks even or makes a little money, so my marginal dollar will not make or break the Summit. Similarly, a website redesign, while probably important, isn’t exciting enough to be listed as the second item. The third item, publish the open problems document, is a good one, though you should make it seem more exciting.

I think the donation drive page should thoroughly make the case that SI is the best use of someone’s charity dollars—that it’s got a great team, great leadership, and is executing a plan with the highest probability of working at every step. That page should probably exist on its own, assuming the reader hasn’t read any of the rest of the site, with arguments for why working explicitly on rationality is worthwhile; why transparency matters; why outreach to other researchers matters; what the researchers are currently spending time on and why those are the correct things for them to be working on; and so on. It can be long: long-form copy is known to work, and this seems like a correct application for it.

In fact, since you probably have other things to do, I’ll do a little bit of copywriting myself to try to discover if this is really a good idea. I’ll post some stuff here tomorrow after I’ve worked on it a bit.

lincolnquirk 28 Dec 2011 8:08 UTC
15 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Singularity Institute $100,000 end-of-year fundraiser only 20% filled so far
OK, here’s my crack: http://techhouse.org/~lincoln/singinst-copy.txt

Totally unedited. Please give feedback. If it’s good, I can spend a couple more hours on it. If you’re not going to use it, please don’t tell me it’s good, because I have lots of other work to do.

lincolnquirk 24 Jan 2012 5:18 UTC
13 points
on: Tell LessWrong about your charitable donations
I primarily donate to SI (~80%), but I also donate to whatever Givewell’s top charity is at the time. Over the last year this has resulted in $150 to VillageReach and $300 to AMF and $1800 to SI.

Why SI? Primarily because I like the people who work there, and wish to signal to them that I am part of their community and that I believe in their mission, so they will like me in return. :)

But that reason is not likely to convince you if you’ve never met them—instead, consider that the work they are doing is incredibly important, and they’re probably the best-equipped and best-positioned team to execute on any plan like theirs.

lincolnquirk

How to en­joy be­ing wrong

How to enjoy being wrong