Interested to see what you have to say here. In my experience, the emotional processing stage is often the bottleneck, both in that it's the one that people have the hardest time with, and in that it creates bottlnecks in the other stages by disincentivizing giving them too much energy because they create more emotional processing. Once the emotional processing is quick, then the others start to speed up because it's no longer true that orienting to something new is painful.
Yeah agreed on emotional-processing being the bottleneck (but, with a caveat: when I'm communicating to the art community, a lot of 'rationalist skills' like 'form a model' and 'make predictions' and 'form agentic plans on purpose' may not be in the water supply as much)
I suspect most of what I have here is sort of covered in Deliberate Grieving and maybe an overall mindset shift of "Don't think of 'your plans' as something that aren't supposed to change'", so when you feel the emotional whiplash or resistance to your plans changing, you kinda shrug and go "oh, ugh, okay, gotta replan" instead of "oh ugh this is so unfair why is this happening it's surely not happening."
I forget what's in the deliberate grieving post, but based on what you say here, I'll note that what I have in mind is largely about identity, not plans. As in, the root of emotional processing is attachment not to an idea about plans but an idea about the self. When one thinks "this is a great plan" the second thought is often "and I'm a great person for coming up with such a great plan". If the plan isn't great, then the person might not be either, and that's way more painful than the plan not being great.
Based on a lot of observations, I see rationalists sometimes manage to get around this because they are far enough on the autism spectrum to just not form strong a strong sense of identity. More often, though, they LARP at not having a strong sense of identity, and actually have to first get in touch with who they are (as supposed to who they wish they were) to begin to develop the skills to do actual emotional processing instead of bypassing it (and suffering all the usual consequences of suppressing a part of one's being).
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1That does all feel relevant. But, in case of Illusion of Transparency, the thing I meant by "Don't think of 'your plans' as something that aren't supposed to change'" was like:
Person has a general life plan of "finish college, get degree, make parents vaguely proud or at least appeased, make some money." And when you hear "maybe your degree is going to be useless because the whole industry will get automated or at least radically changed", you might subconsciously think "that would be way too inconvenient, so it's probably not true."
Or, when you were planning to work on X today, and the boss shows up and says "X is cancelled, we're gonna work on Y instead", you might feel some whiplash and disorientation and anger about that.
If you were planning a wedding and you hear "20% chance of rain that day", you might think "eh, that's not that high, I don't really know what we'd do in case of rain anyway", and then the day of it's raining you're like "Well, shit" and then you do a last minute scramble and it's more effortful and expensive than if you had looked into it beforehand.
Some of these will have identity wrapped up in them, and there are many other situations where identity is more central. But these situations seem to be ones where people feel this "it's not fair / it wouldn't be reasonable for me to half to do this work, so, I won't. Or, I'll drag my feet about it."
It's certainly a skill I feel I'm needing more lately, and trying to cultivate more. But I also have a feeling that people shouldn't need to do this to survive. If elites are building a world where this is necessary to survive (e.g. where older people must stay on top of all the new scams appearing every year, or lose all their money if they slip up once), then maybe fuck those elites. Let's choose different ones: those that understand that humans need a habitat fit for humans.
How do you envision that happening, concretely? It seems to me that elites are elite because they are simply the best at doing whatever it takes to maintain their power, and any replacement elite would have to do similar things or itself be replaced. If it were possible for the majority to govern society for their own benefit from the bottom up, we'd be living in a communist utopia already.
It seems to me that elites are elite because they are simply the best at doing whatever it takes to maintain their power
This is true, but it's clearly conditioned on the currently-existing socioeconomic system. The aristocracy of post-feudal Europe did quite a good job of holding on to power for quite a long time, but over the course of just a few decades (1880-1920, or more expansively the whole century from 1850 to 1950) lost most-all of it to the up-and-coming bourgeoisie. This is despite them holding all the usual suspects for "tools to maintain power at all costs":
- political repression
- control of the military
- heavily-biased elections and political systems more broadly
- ownership of most land in most countries
- control of state institutions
Yet that was still swept away once, depending on the particular country, either the internal structural pressures grew too great for the aristocracy to hold on any longer (e.g. France, the UK), or a misstep in the face of external pressure broke their ability to maintain the above systems of suppression (e.g. Germany, Austria, Russia).
any replacement elite would have to do similar things or itself be replaced
Considering again the above: after the bourgeoisie replaced the aristocracy as the new ruling class, it's easy to see that they began to do very different things, both in terms of government policy and in terms of how they maintained power thereafter: beyond the cursory "they are rich and spend lots of money" and "they try to maintain power", there's very little similarity between the two. The way they maintain power (e.g. electioneering, party capture, money-in-politics, rotating heads of government but all beholden to the markets), what they do with the power (opening up international markets, privatizing industries, lowering taxes), and the people who benefit the most (business-owners, large financiers) are all totally different.
If it were possible for the majority to govern society for their own benefit from the bottom up
You could say the same in 1850, after the failure of the revolutions of 1848: "if it were possible for an elected parliament to govern society without a King to manage them, we'd be living in a liberal-capitalist utopia already". I think history shows that there is often significant hysteresis and high activation costs to societal change, so the fact that we haven't already disempowered the current ruling class tells us rather little about whether it's generally possible to do so.
I think that the politicians are doing their best to prop up home prices and keep the pensions alive and make everything stay normal etc. Banks try to stop you from withdrawing a lot of money at once. The only problem is that we got used to growth and innovation and freedom and peace and comfort and security as the norm. It is deep in the culture... Scammers and wars usually come from across national borders; what you are asking for is not a simple easy clear thing; I don't blame you for wishing.
Propping up home prices causes a lot of harm though. If we think of housing as a consumer good, then it's obviously better if it's cheap, same as any other good. And if we say housing is an investment, then it's better if investment money flows to its actual most productive use, not something that's artificially propped up.
This reminds me of what I thought was a Sun Tzu quote, but I cannot find it anymore. It went something like this :
A good general does not look for a path to Victory, but ensures that all paths lead to Victory.
In a chaotic battlefield (life), one way to make it so that 'all paths lead to Victory' is to improve your orient speed. But the nugget of wisdom I got from the apparently-not-a-Sun-Tzu-quote is that you need to have enough elbow room in your plans across all dimensions so that you're not going to lose everything you care about just because you fail to orient fast enough. Or in other words : you need to cultivate Slack.
If you are slow to orient when needed, that means you need to give yourself an enormous amount of slack to avoid a loss condition. But if you are too quick to orient when there is a perceived need, put too much emphasis or take too much pride in your ability to pivot, then you risk being too 'trigger happy' with your pivots, and becoming incapable of doubling down when that's what the situation calls for. This post made me think of the latter failure mode.
Conversely, if you've got too much slack, this will erode your orient speed, as the need decrease - which manifests as akrasia, institutional inertia, etc.
The quote seems to be from Vorkosigan Saga.
"The key of strategy... is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory."
— Cavilo, The Vor Game
per Tvtropes.
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1Thanks for writing this.
Besides reminding me of John Boyd's famous OODA loop, this also reminds me of this basketball coach's video even though it's not perfectly analogous: https://youtu.be/j8qIA1-Y-gg?si=3dv40oLtvLAMcXFo
Also I'm curious what your plans look like for different scenarios of the future!
I wrote this post with an audience of "artists who are worried about AI" in mind, published on a new blog, The Human Spirit. [1]
My guess is, the 21st century will be a period of rapid change, that feels kinda crazy. I think there’ll be a few skills that used to be a Nice-to-Have (like knowing how to dance well), and that turn into more like a necessity (like reading and writing).
A particular skill I think will be important for people to cultivate is orient speed.
By “orient speed”, I mean: The skill of noticing when some new information has major ramifications. And, instead of shrugging and moving on with whatever you were doing anyway – rapidly thinking through the new implications, and re-evaluate your plans.
We spend much of our lives on autopilot – we get up, make our morning coffee, go to work, hang out with some friends or family in the evening, without having to explicitly strategize about it. You may have a way of living your life that mostly works for you. But sometimes life throws you a curveball. You get fired, your romantic partner breaks up with you, there’s a global pandemic. You need to figure out a new way to live your life.
I think the 21st century is going to throw us a lot of curveballs.
Three examples of what I mean by “curveball” are the rise of social media (and various downstream effects on mental health and social organization), the global covid pandemic (which both disrupted the lives of individual people and triggered significant government response), and the invention of AI generated artwork (which is in the process of radically changing the professional art world).
There’s some stable and comforting about having plans. Often, when people’s plans are disrupted, they look for a way to stick to those plans, and tell themselves the disruption isn’t that bad. Sometimes they’re right.
But sometimes, they find themselves having slid into an autopilot of “use social media for years without reflecting on whether it’s making you angry or anxious or lower-attentions-span”. Or, they find their existing autopilots no longer working because they are now working from home, and a lot of their habits for getting moving and energized no longer work (i.e. during a pandemic it may be less natural to get a brisk walk in each day if you don’t need to go to work. Or, you may not have a natural place to socially unwind with coworkers around the watercooler).
It used to be that the world changed very slowly – people did the same jobs and roles for generations. Since the industrial revolution, it’s started to change faster – industries get disrupted every couple decades. I think that’s going to start coming faster, both because of artificial intelligence, and because of how globally connected the world has become.
Whatever industry you work in, over the next decade or so, it’ll probably get disrupted by AI in some way. Moreover, it’ll likely get disrupted multiple times, so it’s not enough to learn to adapt to one new change. You need to learn to adapt to changes, continually.
This may feel kind of exhausting. It kinda is. But, becomes less exhausting until it’s just sorta normal. Meanwhile I think you can start to practice individual skills in lower-stakes contexts.
There is a skill of noticing change.
There is a skill of realizing the implications of that change.
There is a skill to emotionally handling those implications, if they are scary or disruptive.
There is a skill of, when all is said and done, putting the effort into thinking through new life plans, if your old life plans look like they won’t work anymore.
Most people take weeks or months to really respond to new information that disrupts their major life plans. But you can change your mindset to how you relate to new information, such that it feels less disorienting and you can quickly figure out how to strategize in the new world you find yourself in.
There’s a lot of depth to each of those four skills. The same way that drawing can start with you scribbling something in crayon that mom puts on the fridge, and escalate all the way up to painting the Sistine Chapel – there is a wide range of skill you can have at “realizing the implications of something”, and there’s a wide range of skill you can have at emotionally processing it, and acting on it.
“Orienting” is what I call the collective output of “notice / realize implications / emotionally process / replan”.
I’m hoping to convince you that orienting is a skill, and that you can get better at it.
Some examples of future posts that’ll go into more detail:
In other future posts, I might talk more about the specific implications of AI – what I think it’ll mean for jobs, what it’ll mean for art, what it’ll mean for “meaning.” And, what it’ll mean for humanity as a whole.
But, everything I have to say about that rests on a background belief that “orienting quickly and smoothly” is one of the most important skills you need, that any the practical advice I have will be built on.
The blog is not ready for primetime yet, I'm reworking some framing and experimenting with ways of tackling various issues.