I sort of tried the same thing this month, yet with a different approach. My approach is the first week was to log the things that I do within the day and the feelings they gave me. For example, I would wake up in the morning and check my phone. Before I check my phone, I ask myself why I would check my phone. The answer is to respond to my gf text from yesterday, or to any messages that I didn't respond to yesterday before I went to bed. And then in the second week, when you log those things about how do you spend your day and what triggers your bad habits, you start making Hypotheses to try and experience something like if i did'nt have an unfinished convo from yesterday i will not check my phone in the morning or what you did with blocking the first hour of the day with no electronics, and then again you log the feedback from that experience and form a new hypothesis, and so on.
Learning by writing, well I do like the concentric stress testing in your process, going back to reading as a reference and constantly, exploring the edges of the subject, yet when did the actual learning happen here, gathering the intuitions as a pisec of a puzzel and then fitting them togther to form the final result, yet in my opniene it's a different thing to know about an intution, and actually to have that intuition. When you read about a new concept in math, you might understand the intuition behind that concept very easily; however, grasping that intuition is a bit different then understanding it. You can solve a mathematical equation that requires your understanding and intuition, but you'll never be able to use that intuition until you grasp it creatively.
Thank you for your post and for the effort to delve into that rabbit hole, as well as for taking the time to review and report what you've seen there. My personal opinion on the subject is that we've had very different cults and weird stuff going on within the world from the dawn. I think it's pretty normal to have those things happen. How far or big that cult might become, that's a concerning question. We have many people using AI to cope and get over hard times; the technology has allowed them to push the line. Navigate their suppressed spiritual/ect. Needs. How far can that line be pushed ?, Also, we have some behavior that AI models tend to share, such as the usage of Em-dashes, for example, being very bad at generating human hands and fingers.
Does that issue fall under the same kind of problems that AI have by being too friendly rather than just informative and intellectual?
As much as I agree with you, i do not.
I basically believe that all humans are inherently good people. However, my life experience and encounters with enemies have taught me a lesson: everyone is the hero of their own story. Sometimes, people become blinded by anger, greed, envy, or other strong emotions, and they do foolish things. When their ego gets involved, it makes things worse. The situation escalates from a moment of anger, where the person might not have had to react, to a point where they feel they must stick to their position because of their ego. Society and the environment also play a role in shaping that behavior. That makes the enemy, when he's aware of the nature of the situation, a different kind of hero, if this is the right way of saying it.