A Path out of Insufficient Views

[-]johnswentworth1y5834

We can keep seeking the perfect worldview forever, and we'll never find one. The answer to how to make the best choice every time. The answer to moral dilemmas. The answer to social issues, personal issues, well-being issues. No worldview will be able to output the best answer in every circumstance.

Sounds like a skill issue.

I'm reminded of a pattern:

Someone picks a questionable ontology for modeling biological organisms/neural nets - for concreteness, let’s say they try to represent some system as a decision tree.
Lo and behold, this poor choice of ontology doesn’t work very well; the modeler requires a huge amount of complexity to decently represent the real-world system in their poorly-chosen ontology. For instance, maybe they need a ridiculously large decision tree or random forest to represent a neural net to decent precision.
The modeler concludes that the real world system is hopelessly complicated (i.e. fractal complexity), and no human-interpretable model will ever capture it to reasonable precision.

… and in this situation, my response is “It’s not hopelessly complex, that’s just what it looks like when you choose the ontology without doing the work to discover the ontology”.

There is a generalized version of this pattern, beyond just the "you don't get to choose the ontology" problem:

Someone latches on to a particular strategy to solve some problem, or to solve problems in general, without doing the work to discover a strategy which works well.
Lo and behold, the strategy does not work.
The person concludes that the real world is hopelessly complex/intractable/ever-changing, and no human will ever be able to solve the problem or to solve problems in general.

My generalized response is: it's not impossible, you just need to actually do the work to figure it out properly.

[-]TsviBT1y134

(Buddhism seems generally mostly unhelpful and often antihelpful, but) What you say here is very much not giving the problem its due. Our problems are not cartesian--we care about ourselves and each other, and are practically involved with ourselves and each other; and ourselves and each other are diagonalizey, self-createy things. So yes, a huge range of questions can be answered, but there will always be questions that you can't answer. I would guess furthermore that in relevant sense, there will always be deep / central / important / salient / meaningful questions that aren't fully satisfactorily answered; but that's less clear.

[-]Ákos Kőrösi1y90

Can you say more on what you think is un- or anti-helpful in Buddhism?

[-]TsviBT1y1616

It says to avoid suffering by dismantling your motives. Some people act on that advice and then don't try to do things and therefore don't do things. Also so far no one has pointed out to me someone who's done something I'd recognize as good and impressive, and who credibly attributes some of that outcome to Buddhism. (Which is a high bar; what other cherished systems wouldn't reach that bar? But people make wild claims about Buddhism.)

[-]Kaj_Sotala1y71

It says to avoid suffering by dismantling your motives.

Worth noting that this is more true about some strands of Buddhism than others. I think most true for Theravada, least true for some Western strands such as Pragmatic Dharma; I believe Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism are somewhere in between, though I'm not an expert on either. Not sure where to place Zen.

[-]TsviBT1y104

Being ignorant, I can't respond in detail. It makes sense that there'd be variation between ideologies, and that many people would have versions that are less, or differently, bad (according to me, on this dimension). But I would also guess that I'd find deep disagreements in more strands, if I knew more about them, that are related to motive dismantling.

For example, I'd expect many strands to incorporate something like the negation

of "Reality bites back." or
of "Reality is (or rather, includes quite a lot of) that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." or
of " We live in the world beyond the reach of God.".

As another example, I would expect most Buddhists to say that you move toward unity with God (however you want to phrase that) by in some manner becoming less {involved with / reliant on / constituted by / enthralled by / ...} symbolic experience/reasoning, but I would fairly strongly negate this, and say that you can only constitute God via much more symbolic experience/reasoning.

[-]Kaj_Sotala1y50

For example, I'd expect many strands to incorporate something like the negation

Some yes, though the strands that I personally like the most lean strongly into those statements. The interpretation of Buddhism that makes the most sense to me sees much of the aim of practice as first becoming aware of, and then dropping, various mental mechanisms that cause motivated reasoning and denial of what's actually true.

[-]faul_sname1y95

Lo and behold, this poor choice of ontology doesn’t work very well; the modeler requires a huge amount of complexity to decently represent the real-world system in their poorly-chosen ontology. For instance, maybe they need a ridiculously large decision tree or random forest to represent a neural net to decent precision.

That can happen because your choice of ontology was bad, but it can also be the case that representing the real-world system with "decent" precision in any ontology requires a ridiculously large model. Concretely, I expect that this is true of e.g. human language - e.g. for the Hutter Prize I don't expect it to be possible to get a lossless compression ratio better than 0.08 on enwik9 no matter what ontology you choose.

It would be nice if we had a better way of distinguishing between "intrinsically complex domain" and "skill issue" than "have a bunch of people dedicate years of their lives to trying a bunch of different approaches" though.

[-]Unreal1y81

Hm, if by "discovering" you mean
Dropping all fixed priors
Making direct contact with reality (which is without any ontology)
And then deep insight emerges
And then after-the-fact you construct an ontology that is most beneficial based on your discovery

Then I'm on board with that

And yet I still claim that ontology is insufficient, imperfect, and not actually gonna work in the end.

[-]romeostevensit1y73

'these practices grant unmediated access to reality' sounds like a metaphysical claim. The Buddha's take on his system's relevance to metaphysics seems pretty consistently deflationary to me.

[-]Unreal1y40

I don't know how else to phrase it, but I would like to not contradict interdependent origination. While still pointing toward what happens when all views are dropped and insight becomes possible.

[+][comment deleted]1y20

[-]Jonas Hallgren1y70

This does seem kind of correct to me?

Maybe you could see the fixed points that OP is pointing towards as priors in the search process for frames.

Like, your search is determined by your priors which are learnt through your upbringing. The problem is that they're often maladaptive and misleading. Therefore, working through these priors and generating new ones is a bit like relearning from overfitting or similar.

Another nice thing about meditation is that it sharpens your mind's perception which makes your new priors better. It also makes you less dependent on attractor states you could have gotten into from before since you become less emotionally dependent on past behaviour. (there's obviously more complexity here) (I'm referring to dependent origination for you meditators out there)

It's like pruning the bad data from your dataset and retraining your model, you're basically guaranteed to find better ontologies from that (or that's the hope at least).

[-]Eli Tyre1y2418

The "one weird trick" to getting the right answers is to discard all stuck, fixed points. Discard all priors and posteriors. Discard all aliefs and beliefs. Discard worldview after worldview. Discard perspective. Discard unity. Discard separation. Discard conceptuality. Discard map, discard territory. Discard past, present, and future. Discard a sense of you. Discard a sense of world. Discard dichotomy and trichotomy. Discard vague senses of wishy-washy flip floppiness. Discard something vs nothing. Discard one vs all. Discard symbols, discard signs, discard waves, discard particles.
All of these things are Ignorance. Discard Ignorance.

They don't seem like ignorance to me! Many of them seem distinctly like knowledge!

You probably don't understand what I just said.

It does seem that way. : P

That's fine.

Ok then, what would be a polite and appropriate way to respond to your speech acts like these? Should I state that they sound wrong to me? Should I ignore the content them and treat them as your artistic expression?

[-]Unreal1y10

Just respond genuinely. You already did.

[-]plex8mo40

By "discard", do you mean remove specifically the fixed-ness in your ontology such that the cognition as a whole can move fluidly and the aspects of those models which don't integrate with your wider system can dissolve, as opposed to the alternate interpretation where "discard" means actively root out and try and remove the concept itself (rather than the fixed-ness of it)?

(also 👋, long time no see, glad you're doing well)

[-]Unreal7mo20

Hello! Thanks for the greeting. Do we know each other by chance?

Removing fixedness in ontologies is good. I claim it's in the good direction. And then you go further in that direction and remove the ontology itself, which is a fixation on its own. The ontology is not strictly needed, in much the same way that you can be looking at a video of a waterfall—but it's meaningfully better and more true to look directly at a waterfall. In the same way, you don't need the concept of 'waterfall' to truly see it. The concept actually gets in the way.

Actively rooting out and removing the concept makes it sound like you are somehow reaching in and pulling it out with force, and that's not really how it goes. It's more of a letting go of conceptual grasping, like unclenching a hand.

[-]plex7mo40

Yup, DMing for context!

hmmm, I'm wondering if you're pointing at something different from the thing in this space which I intuitively expect is good using words that sound more extreme than I'd use, or whether you're pointing at a different thing. I'll take a shot at describing the thing I'd be happy with of this type and you can let me know whether this feels like the thing you're trying to point to:

An ontology restricts the shape of thought by being of a set shape. All of them are insufficient, the Tao that can be specified is not the true Tao, but each can contain patterns that are useful if you let them dissolve and continually release the meta-structures rather than cling to them as a whole. By continually releasing as much of your structure back to flow you grow much faster and in more directions, because in returning from that dissolving you reform with much more of your collected patterns integrated and get out of some of your local minima.

[-]Unreal7mo40

I'm pointing to something more extreme than this, but I'd say this is a good direction.

I will attempt, badly, to capture it in words inspired by your description above.

I say 'badly' because I'm not fully able to see the Truth and describe it, but there is a Truth, and it can be described. This process you allude to RE: dissolving and releasing is part of how Truth is revealed, and that's what I'm training in.

So my re-write of this:

An ontology restricts the shape of [the perceived world] by being of a set shape. All of them are insufficient, the Tao [is beyond conceptualization], but each can contain patterns that are useful [if and only if] you [use them to] dissolve and continually release [all patterns] rather than cling to them.

You imply, maybe, that the point is to come back and reform. To get all the patterns 'integrated' and come back into structure.

But the thing around 'flow' and 'faster' and such—all of this is better achieved with no structure or meta-structure. Because structure opposes flow, period. The point isn't to create some ultimate ontology or structure, no matter how fluid, fast, or integrated you think it is; this is returning to delusion, or making delusion the purpose.

This takes sufficient letting go to see, but it's also logically sound even if you can't buy it experientially.

Is there a place for structure? Yes, we use structure as middle way stepping stones to release structure. We have to use delusion (concepts, etc.) to escape delusion because delusion is what we have to work with. The fact that it's possible to use delusion to escape delusion is the amazing thing.

[-]plex7mo*20

Interesting, yes. I think I see, and I think I disagree with this extreme formulation, despite knowing that this is remarkably often a good direction to go in. If "[if and only if]" was replaced with "especially", I would agree, as I think the continual/regular release process is an amplifier on progress not a full requisite.

As for re-forming, yes, I do expect there is a true pattern we are within, which can be in its full specification known, though all the consequences of that specification would only fit into a universe. I think having fluidity on as many layers of ontology as you can is generally correct (and that most people have way too little of this), but I expect the process of release and dissolve will increasingly converge, if you're doing well at it.

In the spirit of gently poking at your process: My uncertain, please take it lightly, guess is that you've annealed strongly towards the release/dissolve process itself, to the extent that it itself is an ontology which has some level of fixedness in you.

[-]Unreal7mo20

The benefit of fixing on the release/dissolve as a way of being is that it will release/dissolve itself, and that's what makes it safer than fixing on anything that doesn't have an 'expiration date' as it were.

I think the confusion on this is that

We have this sense that some process is safe or good to fix upon. Because 'process' is more change-y than something static.

But even process is not safe to fix upon. You are not a process. We're not in a process. To say 'process' is trying to 'thing-ify' or 'reify' something that does not have a property called 'existence' nor 'non-existence'. We must escape from the flattening dichotomy of existence and non-existence, which is a nonsense.

A "universe" cannot be fully specified, and I believe our physics has made that clear. But also our idea of 'universe' is ridiculously small-minded still. Science has narrowed our vision of what is, and fixated upon it, and now we're actually more ignorant / deluded than before. Although I also appreciate the beauty of science and math.

[-]Ben Pace1y146

Lots of interesting stuff in this essay, glad to have read it.

I rely on views less. Therefore I "crash" less. I make fewer mistakes. I sin less.

This sounds to me like you are less fragile or mistaken in your conceptualization of the world, but at the same time I think that it is necessary to have a considered and reliable perspective on the world in order to be an ethical person. Someone who is floating around and whose views change like the wind cannot be pinned down to any beliefs or principles, and cannot pin themselves to the mast of certain principles in the face of great turbulence and storms. Having robust principles and values is required to enter challenging domains and not get captured by stronger egregores or adversaries.

(I don't expect we disagree on this point, but I am failing to otherwise make sense of what you are writing about here.)

[-]Unreal1y102

Yes we agree. 👍🌻

I think I mention this in the essay too.

If we are just changing at the drop of a hat, not for truth, but for convenience or any old reason, like most people are, ...
or even under very strenuous dire circumstances, like we're about to die or in excruciating pain or something...
then that is a compromised mind. You're working with a compromised, undisciplined mind that will change its answers as soon as externals change.

Views change. Even our "robust" principles can go out the window under extreme circumstances. (So what's going on with those people who stay principled under extreme circumstances? This is worth looking into.)

Of course views are usually what we have, so we should use them to the best extent we are able. Make good views. Make better views. Use truth-tracking views. Use ethical views. Great.

AND there is this spiritual path out of views altogether, and this is even more reliable than solely relying on views or principles or commandments.

I will try out a metaphor. Perhaps you've read The Inner Game of Tennis.

In tennis, at first, you need to practice the right move deliberately over and over again, and it feels awkward. It goes against your default movements. This is "using more ethical views" over default habits. Using principles.

But somehow, as you fall into the moves, you realize: This is actually more natural than what I was doing before. The body naturally wants to move this way. I was crooked. I was bent. I was tense and tight. I was weak or clumsy. Now that the body is healthier, more aligned, stronger... these movements are obviously more natural, correct, and right. And that was true all along. I was lacking the right training and conditioning. I was lacking good posture.

It wasn't just that I acquired different habits and got used to them. The new patterns are less effortful to maintain, better for for me, and they're somehow clearly more correct. I had to unlearn, and now I somehow "know" less. I'm holding "less" patterning in favor of what doesn't need anything "held onto."

This is also true for the mind.

We first have to learn the good habits, and they go against our default patterning and conditioning. We use rules, norms, principles. We train ourselves to do the right thing more often and avoid the wrong thing. This is important.

Through training the mind, we realize the mind naturally wishes to do good, be caring, be courageous, be steadfast, be reliable. The body is not naturally inclined to sit around eating potato chips. We can find this out just by actually feeling what it does to the body. And so neither is the mind naturally inclined to think hateful thoughts, lie to itself and others, or be fed mentally addictive substances (e.g. certain kinds of information).

To be clear:

"More natural" does not mean more in line with our biology or evo-psych. It does not mean lazier or more complacent. It does not mean less energetic, and in some way it doesn't even mean less "effort". But it does mean less holding on, less tension, less agitation, less drowsiness, less stuckness, less hinderance.

"More natural" is even more natural than biology. And that's the thing that's probably going to trip up materialists. Because there's a big assumption that biology is more or less what's at the bottom of this human-stack.

Well it isn't.

There isn't a "the bottom."

It's like a banana tree.

When you peel everything away, what is actually left?

Well it turns out if you were able to PEEL SOMETHING AWAY, it wasn't the Truth of You. So discard it. And you keep going.

And that's the path.

[-]Ben Pace1y93

I am reading this as “I rely on explicit theory much less when guiding my actions than I used to”. I think this is also true of me, much of my decision-making on highly important or high-stakes decisions (but also ~most decisions) is very intuitive and fast and I often don’t reflect on it very much. I have lately been surprised to notice how little cognition I will spend on substantial life decision, or scary decisions, simply trusting myself to get it right.

I know other people (who I like and respect) who rely on explicit reasoning when deciding whether to take a snack break, whether to go to a party, whether to accept a job, etc, and I think the stronger version of themselves would end up trusting their system 1 processes on such things.

But I think anyone who is not regularly doing ton of system 2 reflection on decisions that they are confused about or arguing about principles involved in their and others’ decisions will fail to act well or be principled. I do not think there is a way around it, of avoiding this hard work.

I think I would hazard a guess that the person who must rely on explicit theory for guiding behavior is more likely to be able to grow into a wholesome and principled person than the intuitive and kind person who doesn’t see much worth in developing and arguing about explicit principles. Caring about principles seems much rarer and non-natural to me.

[-]Unreal1y50

I will respond to this more fully at a later point. But a quick correction I wish to make:

What I'm referring to is not about System 1 or System 2 so much. It's not that I rely more on System 1 to do things. System 1 and System 2 are both unreliable systems, each with major pitfalls.

I'm more guided by a wisdom that is not based in System 1 or System 2 or any "process" whatsoever.

I keep trying to point at this, and people don't really get it until they directly see it. That's fine. But I wish people would at least mentally try to understand what I'm saying, and so far I'm often being misinterpreted. Too much mental grasping at straws.

The wisdom I refer to is able to skillfully use either System 1 or System 2 as appropriate. It's not a meta-process. It's not metacognition. It's not intelligence. It's also not intuition or instinct. This wisdom doesn't get better with more intelligence or more intuition.

It's fine to not understand what I'm referring to. But can anyone repeat back what I'm saying without adding or subtracting anything?

[-]Ben Pace1y80

Okay, sounds like I have misunderstood you.

Sure, I can retry.

My next attempt to pass your ITT is thus:

Broadly when gaining new skills we go from doing what feels natural, to doing things differently within rigid structures, to getting good at them, to releasing the structures and then just doing what comes naturally. And often afterwards it is both more effective and also comes more naturally than it did before.
Some people seem trapped in the middle step on certain things. They always practice music with a metronome ticking in order to keep the beat, they never trust themselves to just feel it. They always leave the party without drinking, never trusting themselves to behave well and have fun with it. They always need an explicit theory guiding their overall trajectory in life (e.g. career decisions involving spreadsheets), they can never make a major life decision because it feels good in their gut. They always have to discuss purchases over $1,000 with their spouse and sleep on it, they never feel comfortable just going with something that feels right in the moment.
Such people have successfully found useful structures, but are also trapped in them, never venturing forward into the world themselves, always bound by the formalities. This limits their personhood and humanity from coming through, it bounds them to only be as good as the structures they've adopted.
Insofar as you name a structure or set of rules for living life, you are always bound by them and will never let your humanity outshine them.

How close is this to what you're saying, from 1 to 10?

[-]Unreal1y50

First paragraph: 3/10. The claim is that something was already more natural to begin with, but you need deliberate practice to unlock the thing that was already more natural. It's not that it 'comes more naturally' after you practice something. What 'felt' natural before was actually very unnatural and hindered, but we don't realize this until after practicing.

2nd, 3rd, 4th paragraph: 2/10. This mostly doesn't seem relevant to what I'm trying to offer.

...

It's interesting trying to watch various people try to repeat what I'm saying or respond to what I'm saying and just totally missing the target each time.

It suggests an active blind spot or a refusal to try to look straight at the main claim I'm making. I have been saying it over and over again, so I don't think it's on my end. Although the thing I am trying to point at is notoriously hard to point at, so there's that.

...

Anyway the cruxy part is here, and so to pass my ITT you'd have to include this:

"It's not a meta-process. It's not metacognition. It's not intelligence. It's also not intuition or instinct. This wisdom doesn't get better with more intelligence or more intuition. "

"I'm more guided by a wisdom that is not based in System 1 or System 2 or any "process" whatsoever. "

"The "one weird trick" to getting the right answers is to discard all stuck, fixed points. Discard all priors and posteriors. Discard all aliefs and beliefs. Discard worldview after worldview. Discard perspective. Discard unity. Discard separation. Discard conceptuality. Discard map, discard territory. Discard past, present, and future. Discard a sense of you. Discard a sense of world. Discard dichotomy and trichotomy. Discard vague senses of wishy-washy flip floppiness. Discard something vs nothing. Discard one vs all. Discard symbols, discard signs, discard waves, discard particles.

All of these things are Ignorance. Discard Ignorance."

[-]Ben Pace1y51

Sure, I can try again during my lunch break.

I think you are actually emphasizing this section.

It wasn't just that I acquired different habits and got used to them. The new patterns are less effortful to maintain, better for for me, and they're somehow clearly more correct. I had to unlearn, and now I somehow "know" less. I'm holding "less" patterning in favor of what doesn't need anything "held onto."
...
Through training the mind, we realize the mind naturally wishes to do good, be caring, be courageous, be steadfast, be reliable. The body is not naturally inclined to sit around eating potato chips. We can find this out just by actually feeling what it does to the body. And so neither is the mind naturally inclined to think hateful thoughts, lie to itself and others, or be fed mentally addictive substances (e.g. certain kinds of information).

It sounds like you believe, as I become more aligned with who I want to be and with goodness, this will not feel strained or effortful, but in fact I will experience less friction than I used to feel, less discomfort or unease. This is not a learned way of being but rather a process of backing out of bad and unhealthy practices.

I don't know that it's easy for me to describe how this feels in more phenomenological detail. I'd have to find some examples. Most of my experiences of becoming a better person have been around finding good principles that I believe in, and feeling good relying on them and seeing that they indeed do improve the world and help me avoid unethical action/behavior. It has simplified my life tremendously (mostly).

So I believe you mean that, when you find the right way of acting, it feels more natural and less friction-y than the way you were previously behaving. The primary thing I don't understand is that I can't tell what claim you are making about what exactly one is approaching. You keep saying all the things it isn't without saying what it is. I am not sure if you mean "You are born well and then have lots of bad habits and unhealthy practices added to you" or if you are saying "You were not necessarily ever in the right state of mind, but approach it through careful practice, and then it will feel better/natural-er/etc". Also you keep saying that it's not "state of mind" or anything other noun I might use to describe it, which isn't helpful for saying what it is.

My current guess is that you don't think it's any particular state, but that being a spiritually whole person is more about everything (both in the mind and in the mind's relationship to the environment) working together well. But not sure.

Regarding

But I wish people would at least mentally try to understand what I'm saying, and so far I'm often being misinterpreted. Too much mental grasping at straws.

and

It's interesting trying to watch various people try to repeat what I'm saying or respond to what I'm saying and just totally missing the target each time.
It suggests an active blind spot or a refusal to try to look straight at the main claim I'm making. I have been saying it over and over again, so I don't think it's on my end. Although the thing I am trying to point at is notoriously hard to point at, so there's that.

I think talking about phenomenology is hard and subtle and the fact you have failed to have people hear you as you use metaphor and poetry doesn't mean you should talk down to me as though you are a wise teacher and I am a particularly dense student.

[-]Unreal1y50

I am saying things in a direct and more or less literal manner. Or at least I'm trying to.

I did use a metaphor. I am not using "poetry"? When I say "Discard Ignorance" I mean that as literally as possible. I think it's somewhat incorrect to call what I'm saying phenomenology. That makes it sound purely subjective.

Am I talking down to you? I did not read it that way. Sorry it comes across that way. I am attempting to be very direct and blunt because I think that's more respectful, and it's how I talk.

[-]Ben Pace1y41

I propose we wrap this particular thread up for now (with another reply from you as you wish).

I will say that for this bit

Because there's a big assumption that biology is more or less what's at the bottom of this human-stack.
Well it isn't.
There isn't a "the bottom."
It's like a banana tree.
When you peel everything away, what is actually left?
Well it turns out if you were able to PEEL SOMETHING AWAY, it wasn't the Truth of You. So discard it. And you keep going.
And that's the path.

Being asked "So what's the answer? What's the path?" feels more like answering a riddle than being asked "The capital city of England is London. Please repeat back to me the capital city of England?".

Direct speech is clear and unambiguous. Direct speech is like "Please can you close the door?" and indirect speech is like "Oh I guess it's chilly in here" or "Perhaps we should get people's temperature preferences", which may be a sincere attempt to communicate that you want the door closed but isn't direct. What you wrote was not especially unambiguous or non-metaphorical. I think it's a sincere attempt at communication but it's not direct. Being asked to just answer "can anyone repeat back what I'm saying without adding or subtracting anything?" seems hard when you wrote in a rather metaphorical and roundabout way.

[-]AprilSR1y40

To have a go at it:

Some people try to implement a decision-making strategy that's like, "I should focus mostly on System 1" or "I should focus mostly on System 2." But this isn't really the point. The goal is to develop an ability to judge which scenarios call for which types of mental activities, and to be able to combine System 1 and System 2 together fluidly as needed.

[-]Unreal1y20

I appreciate this attempt... but no it is not it.

What I'm talking about is not the skill to combine S1 and S2 fluidly as needed.

[-]Adele Lopez1y100

The "one weird trick" to getting the right answers is to discard all stuck, fixed points. Discard all priors and posteriors. Discard all aliefs and beliefs. Discard worldview after worldview. Discard perspective. Discard unity. Discard separation. Discard conceptuality. Discard map, discard territory. Discard past, present, and future. Discard a sense of you. Discard a sense of world. Discard dichotomy and trichotomy. Discard vague senses of wishy-washy flip floppiness. Discard something vs nothing. Discard one vs all. Discard symbols, discard signs, discard waves, discard particles.
All of these things are Ignorance. Discard Ignorance.

Is this the same principle as "non-attachment"?

[-]Unreal1y60

Yes non-attachment points in the same direction.

Another way of putting it is "negate everything."

Another way of putting it is "say yes to everything."

Both of these work toward non-attachment.

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley1y91

There's people who identify more with System 2. And they tend to believe truth is found via System 2 and that this is how problems are solved.
There's people who identify more with System 1. And they tend to believe truth is found via System 1 and that this is how problems are solved.
(And there are various combinations of both.)

I've been thinking about roughly this idea lately.

There's people who are better at achieving their goals using S2, and people who are better at achieving their goals using S1, and almost everyone is a mix of these two types of people, but are selectively one of these types of people in certain contexts and for certain goals. Identifying with S2 or S1 then comes from observing which tends to do a better job of getting you what you want, so it starts to feel like that's the one that's in control, and then your sense of self gets bound up with whatever mental experiences correlate with getting what you want.

For me this has shown up as being a person who is mostly better at getting what he wants with S2, but my S2 is unusually slow, so for lots of classes of problems it fails me in the moment even if it knew what to do after the fact. Most of my most important personal developments have come on the back of using S2 long enough to figure out all the details of something so that S1 can take it over. A gloss of this process might be to say I'm using intelligence to generate wisdom.

I get the sense that other people are not in this same position. There's a bunch of people for whom S2 is fast enough that they never face the problem I do, and they can just run S2 fast enough to figure stuff out in real time. And then there's a whole alien-to-me group of folks who are S1 first and think of S2 as this slightly painful part of themselves they can access when forced to, but would really rather not.

[-]Viliam1y70

Thank you for your interesting personal story!

(And more "meta" is better at coordinating more people, so you would expect a trend toward more "meta" or more "general" views over time becoming more dominant. Protestantism was more "meta-coordinated" than Catholicism. Science is pretty meta in this way. Dataism is an even more meta subset of "science".)

Not sure what you mean by more "meta" here. Like, people like to create tribes based on shared beliefs, so having some beliefs is better than having none (because then you cannot create a tribe), but having more general beliefs is better than having more specific ones (because each arbitrary belief can make some people object against it)?

So the best belief system is kinda like the smallest number that is still greater than zero... but there is no such thing; there is only the unending process of approaching the zero from above? (But you can never jump to the zero exactly, because then people would notice that they have literally nothing to coordinate their tribe about?)

In such situation, I think the one weird trick would be to invent a belief system that actively denies being one. To teach people a dogma that would (among other things) insist that there is no dogma, you just see the reality as it is (unlike all the other people, who merely see their dogmas). To invent rituals that consist (among other things) of telling yourself repeatedly that you have no rituals (unlike all the other people). To have leaders that deny being leaders (and yet they are surrounded by followers who obey them, but hey that's just how reality is).

So, basically... science.

But of course, people will soon notice that your supposed non-belief non-system often behaves suspiciously similarly to other belief systems, despite all the explicit denial. And they will keep hoping for a better system, which would teach them that there is no dogma, activities that would give them the feeling of certainty that they are following no rituals, and high-status people who would tell them to follow no leaders.

And maybe there is no end, only more iterations of the same. Because the more people around you join the currently popular non-belief non-system, the more obvious its nature as a belief system becomes. You notice how they keep saying the same non-dogmatic statements, performing the same non-rituals, and following the same non-leaders. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it, so you need to move further...

[-]Unreal1y6-1

I don't know if I fully get you, but you also nailed it on the head.

In such situation, I think the one weird trick would be to invent a belief system that actively denies being one. To teach people a dogma that would (among other things) insist that there is no dogma, you just see the reality as it is (unlike all the other people, who merely see their dogmas). To invent rituals that consist (among other things) of telling yourself repeatedly that you have no rituals (unlike all the other people). To have leaders that deny being leaders (and yet they are surrounded by followers who obey them, but hey that's just how reality is).
So, basically... science.

Science is the best cult because it convincingly denies being one at all, disguising itself as truth itself.

I think it's worth admiring science and appreciating it for all the good things it has provided.

And I think it has its limitations, and people should start waking up soon to the fact that if the world is destroyed, humans all destroyed, etc. then science played an instrumental and causal role in that, and part of that is the insanity and evil within that particular cult / worldview.

[-]Viliam1y144

The part that you quoted was originally supposed to end by: "So, basically... Buddhism", but then I noticed it actually applies to science, too. Because it's both, kind of. By trying to get out of systems, you create something that people from outside will describe as yet another system. (And they will include it into the set of systems they are trying to get out of.)

Is there an end to this? I don't know, really. (Also, it reminds of this.)

I think what many people do is apply this step once. They get out of the system that their parents and/or school created for them, and that's it.

Some people do this step twice or more. For example, first they rebel against their parents. Then they realize that their rebellion was kinda stupid and perhaps there is more to life than smoking marijuana, so they get out of that system, too. And that's it. Or they join a cult, and then they leave it. Etc.

Some people notice that this is a sequence -- that you can probably do an arbitrary number of steps, always believing that now you are getting out of systems, when in hindsight you have always just adopted yet another system. But even if you notice this, what can you do about it? Is there a way out that isn't just another iteration of the same?

The problem is that even noticing the sequence and trying to design a solution such as "I will never get attached to any system; I will keep abandoning them the moment I notice that there is such a thing; and I will always suspect that anything I see is such a thing", is... yet another system. One that is more meta, and perhaps therefore more aesthetically appealing, but a system nonetheless.

Another option is to give up and say "yeah, it's systems all the way down; and this one is the one I feel most comfortable with, so I am staying here". So you stay consciously there; or maybe halfway there and halfway in the next level, because you actually do recognize your current system as a system...

One person's "the true way to see reality" is another person's "game people play". I am not saying that the accusation is always true; I am just saying the accusation is always there, and sometimes it is true.

Here some people would defend by saying that there always is a true uncorrupted version of something and also a ritualized system made out of it, and that you shouldn't judge True Christianity by the flaws of the ordinary Christians, shouldn't judge True Buddhism by the flaws of the ordinary Buddhists, shouldn't judge True Scientific Mindset by the flaws of ordinary people in academia, and shouldn't just True Rationality by the flaws of the ordinary aspiring rationalists. -- And this also is an ancient game, where one side keeps accusing the other of not being charitable and failing the ideological Turing test, and the other side defends by calling it the no-true-X fallacy.

Another question is whether some pure unmediated access to reality is even possible. We always start with some priors; we interpret the evidence using the perspectives we currently have. (Not being aware of one's priors is not the same as having no priors.) Then again, having only the options of being more wrong or less wrong, it makes sense to prefer the latter.

(And there is a difference between where you are; and where other people report to be, and whether you believe them. The fact that I believe that I am free of systems and see the reality as it is should be a very weak evidence for you, because this is practically what everyone believes regardless of where they are.)

[-]Eli Tyre1y75

No worldview will be able to output the best answer in every circumstance. This is not a matter of compute.

Why not? Or why can't you have a worldview that computes the best answer to any given "what should I do" question, to arbitrary but not infinite precision?

Is this something that you think you know mainly because of your personal experience with pervious worldviews failing you? Some other way?

Is it something that your reader should be able to infer from this post, or from their own experience of life (assuming they're paying attention?)

[-]Unreal1y30

Or why can't you have a worldview that computes the best answer to any given "what should I do" question, to arbitrary but not infinite precision?

I am not talking about any 'good enough' answer. Whatever you deem 'good enough' to some arbitrary precision.

I am talking about the correct answer every time. This is not a matter of sufficient compute. Because if the answer comes even a fraction of a second AFTER, it is already too late. The answer has to be immediate. To get an answer that is immediate, that means it took zero amount of time, no compute is involved.

Is it something that your reader should be able to infer from this post, or from their own experience of life (assuming they're paying attention?)

Not unless they are Awakened. But my intended audience is that which does not currently walk a spiritual path.

Is this something that you think you know mainly because of your personal experience with pervious worldviews failing you? Some other way?

A mix of my own practice, experience, training, insight, and teachings I've received from someone who knows.

Merely having worldviews failing you is not sufficient to understand what I am saying. You also have to have found a relative solution to the problem. But if you are sick of worldviews failing you or of failing to live according to truth, then I am claiming there's a solution to that.

[-]Eli Tyre1y95

I am not talking about any 'good enough' answer. Whatever you deem 'good enough' to some arbitrary precision.
I am talking about the correct answer every time. This is not a matter of sufficient compute. Because if the answer comes even a fraction of a second AFTER, it is already too late. The answer has to be immediate. To get an answer that is immediate, that means it took zero amount of time, no compute is involved.

That sounds like either a nonsensical or a fundamentally impossible constraint to me.

Max human reaction times (for something like responding to a visual cue by pressing a button) are about 150-200 milliseconds. Just the input side, for a signal to travel from the retina, down the optic nerve, through the brain to the visual cortex takes 50-80 milliseconds.

By the time your sensory cortices receive (not even process, just receive) the raw sense data, you're already a fraction of a second out of sync with reality.

Possibly you're not concerned with the delay between an external event occurring, and when the brain parses it into a subjective experience, only the delay between the moment of subjective experience^[1] and one's response to it? But the same basic issue applies at every step. It takes time for the visual cortex to do image recognition. It takes time to pass info to the motor cortex. It takes time for the motor cortex to send signals to the muscles. It takes times for the muscles to contract.

No response can be immediate in a physical universe with (in the most extreme case), a lightspeed limit. Insofar as a response is triggered by some event, some time will pass between the event and the response.

Or to put it another way, the only way for a reaction to a situation to not involve any computation, is for the response to be completely static and unvarying, which is to say not even slightly responsive to the details of the situation. A rock that has "don't worry, be happy" painted on it can give a perfect truly instantaneous response, if "a rock that says 'don't worry, be happy'" is the perfect response to every possible situation.

Am I being blockheaded here, and missing the point?

Do you mean something different than I do by "instantaneous"? Or are you putting forward that something about worldviews sometimes relies on faster than light signaling? Or is your point that immediate responses are impossible.

^{^}
Notably my understanding is that there isn't a moment of subjective experience, for all it seems like sense data coheres into a single unified experience. Rather, there are a bunch of not-quite consistent pseudo-impressions that don't all take place at a exactly the same moment, but the differences between those are papered over. (You can do various experiments that mess with that papering over process, and get confused, mixed, subjective experience of events happening in sequence.)

[-]Unreal1y0-1

are you putting forward that something about worldviews sometimes relies on faster than light signaling?

OK this is getting close. I am saying worldviews CANNOT EVER be fast enough, and that's why the goal is to drop all worldviews to get "fast enough". Which the very idea of "fast enough" is in itself 'wrong' because it's conceptual / limited / false. This is my worst-best attempt to point to a thing, but I am trying to be as literal as possible, not poetic.

No response can be immediate in a physical universe

Yeah, we're including 'physical universe' as a 'worldview'. If you hold onto a physical universe, you're already stuck in a worldview, and that's not going to be fast enough.

The point is to get out of this mental, patterned, limited ideation. It's "blockheaded", as you put. All ideas. All ways of looking. All frameworks and methodologies and sense-making. All of it goes. Including consciousness, perception.

When all of it goes, then you don't need 'response times' or 'sense data' or 'brain activity' or 'neurons firing' or 'speed of light' or whatever. All of that can still 'operate' as normal, without a problem.

We're getting to the end of where thinking or talking about it is going to help.

[-]Eli Tyre1y115

We're getting to the end of where thinking or talking about it is going to help.

Ok, well maybe it doesn't make sense to answer this question then, but...

Why is it such a crucial desiderata to have (apparently literally) instantaneous responsiveness? What's insufficient about a 200 millisecond delay?

So far "this isn't instantaneous [in a way that my current worldview suggests is literally, fundamentally, impossible]", isn't a very compelling reason for me to try do a different thing that I'm already doing.

It seems like an irrelevant desiderata rather than a reason to Halt, Melt, and Catch Fire.

[-]sapphire8mo40

The body is a Bodhi tree,
The mind a standing mirror bright.
At all times polish it diligently,
And let no dust alight.
-6th patriarch attempt

Bodhi is originally without any tree,
The bright mirror is also not a stand.
Originally there is not a single thing,
Where could any dust be attracted?
-Huineng (Winning Poem)

No worldview will be able to output the best answer in every circumstance. This is not a matter of compute.

Wisdom is a lack of fixed position. It is not being stuck anywhere.

Great Essay btw. Hope my commentary is understandable or at least amusing.

[-]Unreal8mo20

Huh. I don't know if I get the bit on Statistical Learning.

Good poems - I haven't seen those particular translations before.

[-]Jonas Hallgren1y40

I'm currently in the process of releasing more of my fixed points through meditation and man is it a weird process. It is very fascinating and that fundamental openness to moving between views seems more prevalent. I'm not sure that I fully agree with you on the all-in part but cudos for trying!

I think it probably makes sense to spend earlier years doing this cognition training and then using that within specific frames to gather the bits of information that you need to solve problems.

Frames are still useful to gather bits of information through so don't poopoo the mind!

Otherwise, it was very interesting to hear about your journey!

[-]Unreal1y30

I use the mind too. I appreciate the mind a lot. I wouldn't choose to be less smart, for instance.

But we are still over-using the mind to solve our problems.

Intelligence doesn't solve problems. It creates problems.

Wisdom resolves problems.

This is what's really hard to convey. But I am trying, as you say.

[-]Max Entropy5mo30

Holy cow, you've walked the exact path I'm walking right now! I used to be super into Bayesian epistemics, AI risk, etc. Then my world model kept seeing ... large prediction errors. I quit AI risk and quant trading, and now see most of our institutions (science, press) as religious/fallible. Now I'm super into vipassana, storytelling, Kegan levels, NVC, IFS, form is emptiness. I'm even considering training at a monastery.

I have a couple questions for you:

"off-beat frameworks like ... among other things" - I've found these all super powerful frameworks. Any chance you could rattle off the next half dozen things that come to mind? Each of these took me so long to discover alone
Any good reading on circling, spiral dynamics, or chakras off the top of your head?
How do you think about impact when going for arahantship, or do you reject the frame? I'd love to do this too but think I could do an (actually) impactful startup

Another thing I'm interested in is making System 1 models more palatable to System 2 minded people. Because man, I was ignorant for a year or two, and my orbit still think I'm crazy for going on about vipassana and Kegan levels. This is more a word salad for other people with similar interests, but it may interest you too:

Form is emptiness / map is not territory / "Discard Ignorance" - you can prove this information theoretically by saying any model of the world that is true is a perfect compression of the world (or perfect Markov blanket), which isn't possible; thus it's leaky abstractions all the way down
Lowering inferential distance to the phenomenology of the path to stream entry: predictive processing and drug-induced hallucinations make jhanas and magick seem less crazy; mindstream = event loop explains impermanence; active inference free energy = dukkha; sankharas(craving/aversion) = trigger-action patterns encoding a primal pleasure/pain system mediated via somatic sensation for evolutionary history reasons; Buddhist institutions (scientifically) converge to good models of phenomenology (only passing down things that work) but not on untestable metaphysical claims (hungry ghost realm etc.)

[-]Daniel Kokotajlo5mo90

Curious what the large prediction errors were that drove you away from AI risk.

[-]Max Entropy5mo3-1

For a mix of legal and reputational reasons, I will have to be a little vague in describing the experiences I had.

Part 1: social forces (outside view)

There were a bunch of social forces that led me to form an outside view that the AI risk community doesn't converge to truth. I'll describe one, storytelling.

One thing I've learned is that the stories we tell ourselves are models of reality. Life experiences are too numerous; every narrative is a simplification, and there are many narratives (models) that fit the experiences (data). And the default process that humans use to construct narratives is very unscientific - lots of rationalising, forgetting, selecting based on what frame generates the best emotional response. Our narratives and ontologies end up contouring our revealed preferences, while we perceive ourselves as virtuous. (This is where Kegan levels, equanimity meditation and narrative therapy come in.)

So often, when I see people explain their choices, their narrative seems better explained by "trying to justify their job" or "trying to feel good about themselves" than by "genuine truth-seeking and abyss staring". It's a subconscious process, and the truth hurts.

There were a bunch of things I saw / heard about in the AI risk community that didn't seem right. For example, I was abused in college, their friends enabled them, I self-ostracised, they pursued people 2 more years. It's hard when personality disorder is involved; we were all kids so I've forgiven. But when I heard rumours about similar things in AI risk, like the TIME article, and saw a (still-)high-status man inappropriately touch a young woman, you have to wonder - if the supposed adults in the room don't have the EQ to avoid bungling abuse allegations or taking money from crypto moguls, and don't take responsibility, do they have the self-awareness to pivot when their research agendas are failing? Or are they telling themselves stories there too? I truly love these people, but I don't want to be one.

I saw similar things in an overlapping community where, if I could legally talk about it, it would front the New York Times. Around this time I started finding Eric Jang's haikus and Le Guin's Omelas very relatable.

I don't know if you can logic someone into my perspective here. The bottleneck is abyss-staring, and some of the abysses I stared into were enabled by the deep equanimity I gained from my meditation practice. If an unpleasant hypothesis generates such strong emotional / ruminatory reactions that it can't be stably held in your mind, you will stay in denial in the world where it is true. Whether this manifests as getting uncomfortable, abruptly changing the topic, rationalising it away, or nit-picking an irrelevant detail; doesn't matter.

The door to the path I've taken started with meditating a ton, and then pouring equanimity into the thoughts that made me most uncomfortable.

Part 2: my model of AIs (inside view)

I've been thinking about ML since 2018, and my high level take is "you get exactly what you wished for". Models are models of the data: they are shaped by the loss function, regularities in the data set, the inductive biases their functional form encodes, and that's ~it. Like, the "it" in AI models is the dataset, or Hutter's "compression is intelligence".

If you take Anthropic's circuit model of LLMs, circuits need to pay rent in the form of decreasing loss. There's no deception unless you trained it on deceptive data, or created an inductive bias towards deception. Any model capacity allocated towards deception would be optimised out otherwise. Every time we do mech interp, we see the models are just doing the most algorithmically simple/efficient way to encode grammar or Othello board states (before you mention Neel's modular addition circuit, trigonometry soup was the simplest solution for that particular functional form and input/output encoding :P). Point is, there's no room for anything suspicious to hide.

To believe the practice is different from math, you'd have to believe something weird about the differences in real training runs. Adam's loss geometry (because compression=intelligence assumes KL-divergence loss), floating point math, RLHF, etc. I'm glad people are thinking about this. But I'm personally unconvinced it's super high value; it feels better explained by "generating a laundry list of hypotheticals" than by "genuine truth-seeking".

The MIRI ontology has never felt adaptive to modern ML to me, but then I never really understood it.

Maybe we do active inference agents (fixed priors induce action), or get good at RL, or prompt engineer models to be more agentic; it feels wrong to me to think these are x-risky but I can't put into words why. Runaway growth models in particular feel very wrong to me, the world is so (so!) much more complicated and less digitised than people in SV tend to think.

The research agendas I've seen up close all contradict these personal views in some way.

I know there are many other schools of thought on AI risk, and I haven't thought about them all, and I don't doubt my model here has many problems. My only goal here is to convey that I have thought hard about the object-level too, it is not just social ick.

[-]Unreal5mo30

Any chance you could rattle off the next half dozen things that come to mind?

Connection Theory Charting (Leverage Research framework), Core Transformation, Tai Chi / Qi Gong, Bio-Emotive Processing (Doug Tataryn), Shaolin practice (Shi Heng Yi on YouTube), TWIM, Gendlin's Focusing, Immunity to Change (Kegan process), Improv Theater (see book Impro), Perri Chase (spiritual teacher online).

I haven't done this one but I hear Alexander Technique is quite powerful. Also heard good things about Landmark.

[-]Unreal5mo20

Any good reading on circling, spiral dynamics, or chakras off the top of your head?

No, none come to mind.

This is like asking about reading how to ride a horse. Find someone who can teach you to ride a horse with real horses, and you'll learn 100x more, with less error.

[-]Unreal5mo20

How do you think about impact when going for arahantship, or do you reject the frame? I'd love to do this too but think I could do an (actually) impactful startup

Truly beneficial impact is only possible with Awakening. Everything is still based in delusion until realization, and stream entry is not sufficient.

That does not mean you shouldn't do anything until then. We can use everything for the path of letting go.

But simply telling yourself you are using everything for the path is not sufficient, and you are probably deceiving yourself in some way. Therefore find a true spiritual teacher, and a good spiritual community, who can keep you on track.

Until then, you are going to be making decisions based on liking and disliking, grasping and avoiding, and none of that really works. It only creates more, bigger problems.

You can check out the Buddhism for AI course online. Might be of interest.

[-]dirk5mo10

Things based in delusion can still have truly beneficial impact; for example, if you spent a decade working in a soup kitchen without ever meditating even once, you'd still have standard levels of delusion (and you certainly wouldn't have done the most effective thing) but you'd have helped feed hundreds or thousands of people who might otherwise have gone hungry.

If you spent that whole time meditating, on the other hand, then at the end of a decade you wouldn't have had any impact at all.

Awakening and then doing something actually useful can produce beneficial impact, but it's the doing-something-actually-useful step that produces impact, not the part where you personally see with clearer eyes, and moreover it's possible to do useful things without seeing clearly.

[-]Unreal5mo-30

You are speaking from a materialist, consequentialist worldview. I do not buy into this worldview.

It has caused massive suffering and existential crises on the planet and is deeply deluded about what 'beneficial' is.

[-]dirk5mo10

If your worldview is that letting people starve is just as beneficial as feeding them, then I think it is your worldview that is deluded and causes suffering. I think that is an evil belief to hold and will lead only to harm.

[-]Unreal5mo20

I'm even considering training at a monastery.

Well if you are seeking, you can try visiting MAPLE for a week or so. Or try the 1-3 month program. It's not very traditional, but it is a good training system that supports deep practice. If you seek tradition, which has many benefits, I recommend going to Asia.

[-]Seth Herd1y30

If what you're saying is no set of beliefs perfectly captures reality then I agree.

If what you're saying is don't get attached to your beliefs, I agree. Even rationalists are often anchored to beliefs and preferences much more than is Bayesian optimal. Rationalism provides resistance but not immunity to motivated reasoning.

If you're saying beliefs aren't more or less true and more or less useful, I disagree.

If you're saying we should work on enlightenment before working on AGI x-risk, I disagree.

We may well not have the time.

[-]Eli Tyre1y*60

If you're saying we should work on enlightenment before working on AGI x-risk, I disagree.
We may well not have the time.

I am very aware that we may not have time.

But sometimes people will make an argument "unless we figure out X our attempts at resolving x-risk are really really doomed."

Lots of different people, for lots of different versions of X, actually:

solving agent foundations,
scaling human enlightenment (so that we stop flailing making things worse all the time),
building a culture that can talk about the fact that we can't see or talk about conflict (and so our efforts to do good in the world get predictably coopted by extractive forces).
etc.

I definitely want to know if any of those statements are true, for any particular version of X, even if we don't have time to do X before the deadline.

Not having time to succeed doesn't have any baring on what is necessary to succeed.

[-]Eli Tyre1y20

As soon as we believe we've "figured everything out," how fast can we get to "nope"?

Who's "we" here? Are you talking about individual humans in general? The collection of all your IFS parts (or similar)? The broader rationalist / EA community?

[-]Eli Tyre1y20

(And more "meta" is better at coordinating more people, so you would expect a trend toward more "meta" or more "general" views over time becoming more dominant. Protestantism was more "meta-coordinated" than Catholicism. Science is pretty meta in this way. Dataism is an even more meta subset of "science".)

I don't know what yuo mean by meta or meta-coordinated here. How is Protestantism more meta-coordinated than Catholicism?

[-]James Camacho1y1-2

Within a system with competition, why would the most TRUE thing win? No, the most effective thing wins.

Why do you assume truth even exists? To me, it seems like there are just different beliefs that are more or less effective at proliferation. For example, in 1300s Venice, any belief except Catholicism would destroy its hosts pretty quickly. Today, the same beliefs would get shouted down by scientific communities and legislated out of schools.

[-]interstice1y50

Some beliefs can be worse or better at predicting what we observe, this is not the same thing as popularity.

[-]James Camacho1y30

That assumes the law of non-contradiction. I could hold the belief that everything will happen in the future, and my prediction will be right every time. Alternatively, I can adjust my memory of a prediction to be exactly what I experience now.

Also, predicting the future only seems useful insofar as it lets the belief propagate better. The more rational and patient the hosts are, the more useful this skill becomes. But, if you're thrown into a short-run game (say ~80yrs) that's already at an evolutionary equilibrium, combining this skill with the law of non-contradiction (i.e. only holding consistent beliefs) may get you killed.

[-]Caerulea-Lawrence1y10

Hello Unreal,

this was surprisingly relatable, despite us taking very different paths to reach similar conclusions.

The uncompromised mind is something I have sincerely delved into for a good while, and also the part where you describe discarding 'everything', is quite relaxing.

Some of your views seem complimentary, and some seem like none of us can be in the right, (or both, but just slightly).

My motivation was and never has been AI, though, and if that is a fixed point to you, maybe we can find out how/why we see it differently? I find the focus on AI to often lead to the kind of 'one X to solve everything' complacency our mind is so prone to. *Which is a very short version, on one reason of many.

Maybe you'd like to have a more in-depth talk as well. I'll send you a PM, so let me know what you think.

Kind regards

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

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A Path out of Insufficient Views

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