MSRayne

Who is this MSRayne person anyway?

I've been on this site as a lurker for a few years now, and started interacting more heavily the past month or so. I've been reluctant to engage much, because, to be honest, I'm a very unusual person - even by the standards of LessWrong - and I don't feel like I fit in or have any idea how to contribute effectively. So I'm writing this both to introduce myself as a member of the community (so you can get a sense of who this MSRayne weirdo is who keeps commenting on your posts), and to ask: how can someone like me contribute? (Warning: I'm very long winded and if I had stopped and pruned this to be easier to read I would probably not have written it at all. I'm going to trust you not to make fun of me for things I say here. I think LessWrongers can be trusted not to do that.) A hero is born I was raised by reclusive narcissists who think children are essentially extensions of their parents who ought not have any agency or opinions of their own. I am still unraveling ways in which things I passively assume to be objective truths are actually just opinions my parents burned into me by consistently punishing me for contradicting them. I was totally socially isolated most of my life, homeschooled until 16 with only a few short-term periods of interaction with others of my own age (all of them entirely superficial with no friendships resulting), never had a job (I didn't want to have yet another person telling me what to do, and I didn't and don't care about anything money can buy), never went to college (my older brother went twice and has never had a good job so it seemed like a total waste of money, and anyway I would have to do two terrifying things - leave home, and be around other people), etc. I still live with my parents and rarely leave the house. In fact I rarely leave my bedroom. I hated my "schooling", which was essentially just my parents giving me textbooks, telling me to work through them, and (if mom) ignoring me while I mostly daydreamed and doodled,

36Jul 1, 2022

MSRayne

Message

I'm a very confused person trying to become less confused. My history as a New Age mystic still colors everything I think even though I'm striving for rationality nowadays. Here's my backstory if you're interested.

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Any tips for eliciting one's own latent knowledge?

I struggle to write. I cannot figure out how to access my own thoughts and ideas. They come in non-linguistic forms - vague feelings, 3D images, animations - with a verbal narrator on top, but my very bad memory, and the fact that my best thinking is done in the...

Jul 13, 202216

Nature abhors an immutable replicator... usually

Epistemic status: Popped into my head yesterday and I am trying to clarify my reasoning about it out loud. I expect that I am overestimating the universality of this principle to at least some degree, and there is some chance that it's altogether wrong, but I think it may be...

Jul 3, 202228

Who is this MSRayne person anyway?

Jul 1, 202236

MSRayne's Shortform

Jun 29, 20222

My cognitive inertia cycle

I seem to have a kind of "mental momentum". Or maybe "cognitive inertia" is a better word. When I feel as if I've lately been doing things worth doing, I feel curious and open and interested in things and seek more things to do, and have a good chance of...

Jun 26, 20227

Mitigating the damage from unaligned ASI by cooperating with aliens that don't exist yet

Epistemic status: Pretty sure the idea is sound, but its feasibility is unfortunately a bit questionable. Basic idea Humanity must as soon as possible send a message to civilizations beyond Earth containing the following: 1. Everything we currently know about the alignment problem, together with the bare minimum of AI...

Jun 21, 2022-8

Perfectionism as depth-first search

Perfectionism could be generally defined as an approach to solving problems and completing tasks fixated primarily on minimizing perceived imperfection. Depth-first search, meanwhile, is an algorithm for traversing tree structures, which starts at the root, then goes down a single branch until it hits a leaf. Upon reaching a leaf,...

Dec 29, 20205

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MSRayne

MSRayne

MSRayne

Who is this MSRayne person anyway?

Nature abhors an immutable replicator... usually

Any tips for eliciting one's own latent knowledge?

My cognitive inertia cycle

MSRayne

Any tips for eliciting one's own latent knowledge?

Nature abhors an immutable replicator... usually

Who is this MSRayne person anyway?

MSRayne's Shortform

My cognitive inertia cycle

Mitigating the damage from unaligned ASI by cooperating with aliens that don't exist yet

Perfectionism as depth-first search

Who is this MSRayne person anyway?

Nature abhors an immutable replicator... usually

Any tips for eliciting one's own latent knowledge?

My cognitive inertia cycle

Any tips for eliciting one's own latent knowledge?

Nature abhors an immutable replicator... usually

Who is this MSRayne person anyway?

MSRayne's Shortform

My cognitive inertia cycle

Mitigating the damage from unaligned ASI by cooperating with aliens that don't exist yet

Perfectionism as depth-first search