Morphism's Shortform

Morphism

This is a special post for quick takes by Morphism. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

Newcomblike suffering

Many things in the world want you to suffer. Signalling suffering is useful in many social situations. For example, suffering is a sign that one has little slack, and so entities that are out to get you will target those who signal suffering less.

Through Newcomblike self-deception, a person can come to believe that they are suffering. The easiest way to make yourself think that you are suffering is to actually suffer. In this way, the self-deception hyperstitions itself into reality. Perhaps a large amount of human suffering is caused by this.

Solving this problem may be of great interest to those who want to reduce human suffering.

I may write a longer post about this with more details and a more complete argument. If you particularly want this, please comment or dm, as that will make me more likely to write it.

Sometimes you want/need other people to help you, and if you display less suffering, they may assume that it's not serious, and therefore won't help you. This can be a problem for people who do not display suffering in neurotypical or culturally expected ways.

Sometimes there are situations where you are not allowed to say "no", and then "I can't, can't anymore!!!" becomes the next best thing. Or sometimes people just suck at saying "no".

2yams9mo

I’m not trying to silence anything. I have really just requested ~1 hour of effort (and named it as that previously). You’re hyperbolizing my gestures and making selective calls for rigor. Meta: I hope to follow a policy of mostly ignoring you in the future, in this thread and elsewhere. I suggest allocating your energy elsewhere.

4Zack_M_Davis9mo

When someone uses the phrase "costly signal", I think it's germane and not an isolated demand for rigor to point out that in the standard academic meaning of the term, it's a requirement that honest actors have an easier time paying the cost than dishonest actors. That is: I'm not saying you were bluffing; I'm saying that, logically, if you're going to claim that costly signals make your claim trustworthy (which is how I interpreted your remarks about "a method of rendering a more costly signal"; my apologies if I misread that), you should have some sort of story for why a dishonest actor couldn't send the same signal. I think this is a substantive technical point; the possibility of being stuck in a pooling equilibrium with other agents who could send the same signals as you for different reasons is definitely frustrating, but not talking about it doesn't make the situation go away. I agree that you're free to ignore my comments. It's a busy, busy world that may not last much longer; it makes sense that people to have better things to do with their lives than respond to every blog comment making a technical point about game theory. In general, I hope for my comments to provide elucidation to third parties reading the thread, not just the person I'm replying to, so when an author has a policy of ignoring me, that doesn't necessarily make responding to their claims on a public forum a waste of my time.

Morphism's Shortform

3

Morphism's Shortform

3

Newcomblike suffering