bjoernw
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bjoernw has not written any posts yet.
bjoernw has not written any posts yet.
I have a little bit of positive experience with reducing my sensitivity to loud ambulance sirens in my street. The exercise was very simple and I have a vague idea of the theory behind it.
The theory goes like this: In biology/psychology there's a distinction between different reactions to sudden and intense sensory stimuli. An orientation reflex on the one hand and a startle (and/or defense?) reflex on the other hand. The difference that's relevant here is that the orientation reflex quickly habituates while the startling does not. For instance, maybe you have a new washing machine that makes a strange, unfamiliar sound. For many people this sound may catch their attention, they... (read more)
I'm reminded of an ICLR 2020 paper describing a case of "black magic" in a reinforcement learning setting, if you like:
https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2020/03/27/attacks/
There are two agents that play a simplified soccer game. One being the goalkeeper and one trying to score a goal. After an initial training phase, the goalkeeper starts acting strange, apparently random. The movements are adversarial noise, optimized to "confuse" the other player as much as possible to stop them from scoring a goal.
Also an example of weird things that can happen in high-dimensional spaces.
Your experience also fits nicely with Robin Hanson's description of how a wider range of abilities (and the interest in those) is a marker of high status: https://www.overcomingbias.com/2021/06/our-big-wealth-status-mistake.html
Great idea and nicely put, thanks!
I understand the objection of previous commenters that the post's idea seems a bit backwards because people with impostor syndrome themselves think that they have *too little* skill for their position, not too much.
But I think these objections take the self-made narrative of those experiencing impostor syndrome too serious. Our instincts for navigating power hierarchies arguably are much, much older than our ability to spin elaborate self-concepts. I imagine a causal relationship like this:
skill/dominance-mismatch -> fear (flight impulse) -> elaborate explanation for the felt fear
We are just super bad at explaining our basal feelings. Those explanations are usually overfitting.
Here's another example that often makes me laugh: The employees of my local organic grocery store have this habit of signaling strongly to each other how little they know about handling the shop's technical devices.
Fascinating! Since falling asleep is arguably a bodily process as well, I wonder if you also have observations about the bodily sensations during the stages? Or do you try to be exclusively aware of the visuals and try to not to be aware of the body?
Is the article a fair and much-needed outside piece of criticism that we should take seriously?
I’m still thinking about the question if (or on which level) Cade Metz’ criticism of the Rationality scene could be right. Because the counter position that he'd be wrong in every regard on all levels of analysis seems to be a too strong one.
Scott Aaronson summarized the NYT article’s central thesis as warning against the Rationality scene with its openness to ideas as a kind of a “gateway drug” to dangerous beliefs. And generally it doesn’t seem too controversial to assume that ideas can be interesting and potentially valuable as well as dangerous too [vaguely gesturing in... (read more)
Is the article a fair and much-needed outside piece of criticism that we should take seriously? We talk a bigger game about accepting and integrating outside criticism than many communities. Maybe this is our chance to really put that into practice?
A "fair and much-needed outside piece of criticism" would arguably take advantage of its outside perspective to point out community taboos and blind spots. Reading about your blind spots should, almost per definition I guess, make your reading stumble in strange and unpredicted ways. But the NYT article is depressingly predictable in its attempt to discredit reputation by alluding to vague links to right-wing positions and figures. The predictability reaches almost comical... (read more)
I like that question. It seems related to the question of "integration" in psychotherapy. Like when you made a valuable System I / bottom-up experience, how can you support remembering it? One technique I remember is to connect the felt sense with a more symbolic anchor - a gesture, image, sound, bodily position, place, situation, etc. And it sounds like a nice experiment to try "spaced integration" by repeatedly recalling the felt sense through the anchor.
I wonder if you might have it backwards: Building concentration up to TMI level 4/5 may have been enough to push your sensory system far enough into insight territory that the anxiety and panic that you are experiencing now may, in fact, be symptoms of a Dark Night (or partly so). In that case, the "standard" prescription is *more* insight practice, not less.
If you would like to look into that line of reasoning, Daniel Ingram's (highly opinionated but very valuable) book would be a standard source to learn more about Dark Nights. Also you could check out Cheetah House's website to see if you can relate to their description of symptoms.
In any case I'd second Logan Riggs recommendations. The recordings of Rob Burbea's jhana retreat are amazing.