We recently gave our 9-year old a 'kid license' attached to a tile to take around when he runs errands.  He's had not trouble with anything other than one store refusing to sell him cookies on the basis that they didn't think his mother would approve.  He really loves the independence.  I've given him a cell-phone in a fanny-pack to take when going someplace new, but he doesn't want to take the cell phone most of the time.  Of course we can't do this with our 6-year old, both because he is clearly not mature enough, and even if he was, I'm pretty sure strangers would object.

To what extent are people burning themselves out, vs using what they're doing as an excuse not to perform effortful and sometimes unpleasant mental and physical hygiene?  My understanding is this is a crowd prone to depression anyway, and failing to engage in self-care is a pretty common.  IE - if these people were working on something else, would we expect them to burn long-term resources anyway?

I notice that as someone without domain specific knowledge of this area, that Paul's article seems to fill my model of a reality-shaped hole better than Eliezer's.  This may just be an artifact of the specific use of language and detail that Paul provides which Eliezer does not, and Eliezer may have specific things he could say about all of these things and is not choosing to do so.  Paul's response at least makes it clear to me that people, like me, without domain specific knowledge are prone to being pulled psychologically by use of language in various directions and should be very careful about making important life decisions based on concerns of AI safety without first educating themselves much further on the topic, especially since giving attention and funding to the issue at least has the capacity to cause harm.  

It was interesting to re-read this article 2 years later.  It reminds me that I am generally working with a unique subset of the population, which is not fully representative of human psychology.  That being said, I believe this article is misleading in important ways, which should be clarified.  The article focused too much on class, and it is hard to see it as anything but classist. While I wrote an addendum at the end, this really should have been incorporated into the entire article and not tacked on, as the conclusions one would reach without it are quite different. I believe I didn’t incorporate it largely because I am not a strong writer and didn’t know how to do this in an elegant way without losing my other points. 

This article needed some discussion of internal vs external locus of control. My current clients have a strong sense that they have control over their lives.  This leads to attempting more actions to change their situations but also internalizing their failures.  The population at the Medicaid clinic feel that they and in fact do have less control over their lives.  This is an important thing to point out.  I had one older minority client who basically described a lifetime of being buffeted about by various government policy changes and oppressive interference in her life for the last several decades.  She suffered many tragedies that were not within her control.

I believe I also over-simplified the psychology of both my current and former patients for clarity. The majority of clients who come to me do want medication.  I do see people struggling with past traumas and current situations which are out of their control.  I definitely saw people at the Medicaid clinic suffering from identity crises.  Money was not absent from the concerns of people on government assistance.  I still think the spirit of my comparisons is accurate, but the oversimplifications are dangerous, and I’m not certain that the greater point was worth the confusion. 

I still believe the conclusion that struggling to hold onto identity leads to great human suffering. It is not a simple problem to solve, nor necessarily one that should be fully solved.  I will leave that to others to debate.  I do spend a lot of time working with people on examining their expectations of themselves, where they come from, and whether holding themselves to these standards leads to anything positive in anyone’s life. 

"That was when close friends started delicately checking to see if I was “okay.” "

I would suggest seeing some of your close friends in person and seeing if they think you are ok instead of 'reassuring' them that you are fine. Your 'explanation' is not at all reassuring on this front. The whole incident seems out of character from what I remember of you, and I'm guessing your friends are right to be concerned. I recommend not writing more in public forums for the time being.

There is a lot of arguing in the comments about what the 'tradeoffs' are for individuals in the scientific community and whether making those tradeoffs is reasonable. I think what's key in the quoted article is that fraudsters are trading so much for so little. They are actively obscuring and destroying scientific progress while contributing to the norm of obscuring and destroying scientific progress. Potentially preventing cures to diseases, time and life-saving technology, etc. This is REALLY BAD. And for what? A few dollars and an ego trip? An 11% instead of a 7% chance at a few dollars and an ego trip? I do not think it is unreasonable to judge this behavior as reprehensible, reguargless if it is the 'norm'.

Using peers in a field as a proxy for good vs. bad behavior doesn't make sense if the entire field is corrupt and destroying value. If 100% of scam artists steal people's money, I don't forgive a scam artist for stealing less money than the average scam artist. They are not 'making things better' by in theory reducing the average amount of money stolen per scam artist. They are still stealing money. DO NOT BECOME A SCAM ARTIST IN THE FIRST PLACE. If academia is all a scam, then that is very sad, but it does not make it ok for people to join in the scam and shrug it off as a norm.

And being fraudulent in science is SO MUCH WORSE than just being an ordinary scam artist who steals money. It's more like being a scam artist who takes money in exchange for poisoning the water and land with radioactive waste. No, it's not ok because other people are doing it.

That might be true, but it is very hard for people to make reasoned changes when they are deeply depressed. Depression has real cognitive effects, which people frequently complain about. Depressive reasoning often looks like I SUCK I SUCK I SUCK I SUCK Everything is my fault and I screwed it all up, and I can't fix it, and I can't fix it because I SUCK I SUCK I SUCK. Ok - let me focus for a second - If I change this... I SUCK I SUCK ... Ok, if I change this thing then... why can't I think? Oh right I SUCK I SUCK I SUCK... etc, etc. Getting people out of that pattern is very helpful.

Number 1 is the politically correct thing to say, but was not what I actually observed when working with Medicaid patients. People complained far less about poverty than I (who come from a middle-class upbringing) would have anticipated. People adjust to what they are used to. It's the middle class, with the constant fear of downward mobility, which really suffers from monetary issues. There were some interesting interactions between race and class, which are hard to express without the internet eating me. Being hispanic and poor is very different from being black and poor, which is different still from being white and poor. And I'll leave it at that.

2 just sounds correct. America has reached the apotheosis of individualism. We can't all be the star of the show, and it hurts when you find out you are not.

The latter. Most 'analysts' today do not consider themselves primarily freudian.

My new practice is only 3 months old, so no one with full on DID yet, though some people have these rando dissociations (which are likely trauma related) I had one patient in my former position with DID. Very interesting case, but hippa lol.