Crocker's rules.
I'm nobody special, and I wouldn't like the responsibility which comes with being 'someone' anyway.
Reading incorrect information can be frustrating, and correcting it can be fun.
My writing is likely provocative because I want my ideas to be challenged.
I may write like a psychopath, but that's what it takes to write without bias, consider that an argument against rationality.
Finally, beliefs don't seem to be a measure of knowledge and intelligence alone, but a result of experiences and personality. Whoever claims to be fully truth-seeking is not entirely honest.
Of course it's dangerous. If it wasn't, then it couldn't be helpful. Meditation allows you to break things, and the effects will be felt as positive if you break something unwanted, and harmful if you break something wanted. It's not that there's good and bad consequences which are opposites, there's merely consequences which are perceived as positive or negative.
I might end up depressed if I break a core belief which is currently protecting me. I might also feel like a weight has been taken off my shoulders if I break a self-imposed limitation which has overstayed its welcome, or if I manage to accept something which is bothering me (collapsing an internal conflict to either side).
If I meditate too hard, I might break an aspect of my perception. My sense of self, my desires, some perceived duality, or the ability to differentiate living and dead objects. Meditation is a blunt tool, you can't get specific outcomes unless you know what you're doing.
I'd like to say more, but I can't. Everything I read about meditation is ambiguous or contradictory. Even reading many different sources, I cannot synthesize it into anything useful or specific. I'd love to know if somebody else knew anything certain (does meditation make one more sensitive, more numb, more grounded, more distant?)
Edit: Wait, some kinds of meditation (which?) can quiet the mind. But even this effect could manifest in different ways which I can't tell apart.
I've found that there's a gradient from "The environment is hostile and static" to "the environment is yours to use, to help you towards your goals", and that my mood decides where I land on this gradient, with depression landing in the far left end. The environment also feels smaller the less depressed I am.
I'm not sure this will be any help, but dopamine makes me feel better short term (probably because energy and mood correlate so well) and socializing makes me feel better long-term. My depression went away when I started socializing for hours a day. Stimulants also makes me feel really good, but I think that's because they practically lower my social needs to zero (which means that they're fulfilled until the stimulants wear off).
I don't know anything about antidepressants, but I've probably tried everything else, and for some reason, socializing more wasn't one of the 100 first things that I tried, so I learned a lot of minor things. I found some other methods which worked, but they're much too complicated to share here. Just know that it relates to manipulating ones core beliefs and perception so that the world appears more positive and meaningful, and allowing yourself and your ego/identity to be part of said world.
I personally just model errors like that as "projection". The error here is "I can't think of any more possibilities, therefore, more possibilities do not exist". It's very common for people to assume that other things are bounded by the same limitations as they are. The concept of "unknown unknowns" is related here as well.
More generally, when people talk about life and reality, they talk about themselves, even if they do not realize it. They assume their map is the territory. For instance, if a person says "Life is suffering", that may be true for them, and every counter-argument they hear may even evaluate to false in their model of reality, but that still doesn't mean it's true for everyone.
Another comment mentioned "Proof by failure of imagination" and I like that name, since the fallacy is an error which occurs in a person. When we say "logical error" we don't mean that there's an error in logic itself, but in its use. If something is implicit for long enough, we risk forgetting it (I think this happened to morality. Now certain things are considered good in an absolute sense, rather than in a context)
If somebody uses a "proof by contradition", then a single example is enough (∃), but this argument is in the other direction, so one needs to show that something is true for all examples (∀) and not just some (∃). The only reason I can think of that somebody would make this error, is that they consider the examples they thought of to be "the best". If you can refute the best argument for why something would happen, it's easier to assume that it won't (I guess this is what steelmanning is?). This method works fine for smaller problem spaces, but quickly grows useless because of the inherent asymmetry between attacking and defending
Why are there so many trans women in nerdy groups such as rationalists?
I have more theories on this.
A stranger theory I have, is that people have two identities in them, the first is who they consider themselves to be, and the other is their internal image of their ideal partner. If you choose a character in a video game, both are natural choices - do you want to represent yourself, or do you want to create your own ideal? Now, what happens if you choose the latter and start to identify with it? Then you become your own object of desire. If this 'bug' exists in the human mind, a lot of other things seem to make more sense.
Lastly, a small nitpicks:
AGP seems to rely on contrast, as a lot of fetishes do. In this case, a man with AGP could never truly become a woman, as this would eliminate the contrast which causes the pleasure.
A mans image of a woman might differ from a womans image of a woman substantially. This is the same problem that furries have - you identify as a fox? Well, maybe your image of what a fox is, is different from how an actual fox experiences the world. Can we really be certain that the internal image we have of something else is anything like the real thing? Even when we fall in love with another person, we often fall in love with the image we have of them, only to be disappointed later.
Finally, AGP/Gender Conservatism aren't the most upstream factors, by which I mean that these two categories have their own, more fundamental causes.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading your post, and the amount of factors involved is enormous, so nobody can take all of them into account
I'll try defending his view: We're rewarding victimhood and humility more than ever before, and in the west, the main reason behind this change in values has been Christianity.
The leap from "We're rewarding weakness" to "We see others as stronger than they are" is not trivial, but:
I'm not saying this view is necessarily true, but I don't think it's unreasonable either. It's also my understanding that strength was much more valued in the past, but I don't know enough ancient history to judge the extent to which this is true. It might fluctuate or vary between continents.
Interesting post! Thank you.
Firstly, I'd like to warn against solving this issue too well. If you're ashamed of nudity, for instance, and you accidentally fix this too well - then all you will feel being nude in the future is 'nothing'. You will have removed the thrill as well. I consider this problem to be similar to being unable to cry, or to being weirdly unaffected when something terrible happens around you.
If you’re generalized-coming-out to people who themselves already feel emotionally close to you
I think this is true, and that it's because they already want to get to know you better, or to find a weakness in you which they can exploit. If they want your vulnerability with a value of 0.2, then it's alright that your insecurity has a negative value of -0.1. The other persons "demand" protects your "supply" from falling below 0 value, so you're forgiven.
For instance, if I offered you a bottle of water and you didn't even want it, that could seem quite pathetic, an attempt at giving gifts to be liked, perhaps. But.. What if you were thirsty? Then you'd interpret me as providing value, and not as a person begging to be valued. Other people having an interest in you helps create a situation in which you're not merely oversharing to strangers online.
Speaking of supply and demand, things are higher value when they're rare. People usually appreciate you sharing your weakness more if it's special (i.e. they're the only person you told). It can come across positively even if this is not the case, but then it's more of a "This person seems open-minded, so I don't have to fear being judged by them" interpretation. Nobody would want to cuddle with a hedgehog.
I know much better places to share my soul than LW. Young people seem more accepting in general, they have learned less red flags, so they treat you as an individual. In short, there's less false positives, projected fears and such. People on LW tend to be high in openness, though, so there's at least that.
I learn a lot from observing women. Women are good at making weakness, vulnerability, helplessness and other such traits appear endaring rather than pathetic, which impresses me a lot. Turning something bad into something good? If we could generalize this, we wouldn't even need to reduce suffering, we could simply give it value instead. Idol personalities do similar things, they're forced to retain a very high value, while still being ordinary and human in a lot of ways in order to connect with their fans. They need to ignore common dating advice like "be cold, stoic, masculine and mature" and still get women to fight over them! In short, this seems more like an artistic skill than a technical one. Can you write a book with a likable villian? Then you can likely also be mischievous in an endaring manner.
Finally, if you don't want to be judged negatively, avoid moralizers. Preaching in general is a sign that somebody is fighting against something that they're afraid of, and that they might label you negatively if you remind them of something which they associate with something which they associate with something which they hate or fear. Most traits that somebody else would actually harm you for having are in the category of politics, so I'd also avoid anyone who talks about politics a lot.
Someone who’s specifically drawn to something which I myself am ashamed of?
You being ashamed of something doesn't necessarily mean that you think it's bad. Maybe you think it's good, but fear that you will be unable to find other people who agree with you. i.e. you might diverge from the norm and fear that people won't understand and that they will judge you for it.
But I'm getting the feeling that, to you, there's not much difference between the norm and yourself? It feels as if you've fused with the general consensus and the values associated with your intellectual purpuits, to the point that they've replaced your own values and your own opinions about yourself. So that your subjective "good (enjoyment and love)", and the external "good (utility and progress)" have become one.
From more objective perspectives, this is "good", it doesn't really seem to bring disadvantages with it. But I personally find a lot of fulfillment in the social aspects of life, the whole package deal with all the problems and disadvantages.
By the way, there are things that I don't like in a partner, and think that I don't mind but still recognize as bad, and these are different categories. I wouldn't want my partner to spend time around druggies, but I wouldn't turn down a girl because she had trauma, even though trauma is "bad". As long as it's something she'd work on in the long run, it wouldn't worry me.
Don’t think positive and negative sensations or experiences lie on the same continuous line of “goodness”
This seems like a global modifier which is a function of your mental health. High levels of mental well-being seems to make people grateful even for their negative experiences.
Would agree that negative experiences are bad, and more of them is even worse
That negative experiences are experienced as bad does not mean that they're bad, it means that experiencing certain things as bad is good. For instance, when you feel exhausted, your body still has lots of energy left, it merely creates the illusion that you're running empty in order to prevent you from harming yourself. Negative experiences are also just signals that something isn't right, but having the experience is valuable, and avoiding the experience might merely prevent you from learning that something needs changing. Saying that pain is bad in itself is like saying that the smoke alarm in your kitchen is bad. Suffering isn't damage, it's defense against damage.
Would agree that’s it’s immoral to create more negative experience (or in some cases fail to reduce the amount of negative experience)
Negative experiences can create good outcomes (because, as I said earlier the felt 'badness' is an illusion and thus not objective negative utility). And I dislike that axiom because it says "it's better to die at birth than to grow old" (the latter will have more negative experiences).
Would not agree that it’s immoral to fail to create more positive experiences (or reduce the amount of positive experience someone has)
I'm the rare sort of person who does take this into account and deem it important. I'd go as far as to say "If you have a lot of positive experiences, you will be able to shrug off more negative experiences with a laugh".
In short, the brain lies to itself because there's utility in these lies, but if you believe in these lies, then you cannot come to the correct conclusions about this topic. For the rest of the conclusions one may arrive at, I think they depend on the mental health of the speaker, and not on their intelligence. The sentence "Life is suffering" is not an explanation for why people are feeling bad, it's a product of people feeling bad. Cause and effect goes in the other direction than what is commonly believed.
Thanks for your kind reply!
Hmm, it seems that the meta meta-cognition you're pointing at is different from me applying my meta-cognition on itself recursively, since regular meta-cognition can already be stacked "too far" (that is, we can look at reality itself from an outside perspective, and ruin our own immersion in life similarly to how you can ruin your immersion in a book by recognizing it as a constructed story). I don't think you're crazy at all, but I do think that some of these ideas can be are psychologically unhealthy (and there's a good chance you're better at planning that execution, or that you're prone to daydreaming, or that your intellectual hobbies lead you to neglect everyday life. Yes, I'm projecting). I'm seeing no signs of skizophrenia, I just think other people have difficulty parsing your words. Is your background different? Most people on LW have spatial intuitions and communicate in terms that computer scientists would understand. If you read a lot of fiction books, if your major is in philosophy, or if your intelligence is more verbal than spatial, that would explain the disconnect.
I don't think we should meet our needs with super-intelligence, that's too much power. Think about zoos - the zookeeper does not do everything in their power to fulfill the wishes of the animal, as that would do it no good. Instead of being given everything it wants, it's encouraged to be healthy through artificial scarcity. You restrict the animal so that it can live well. After all, cheat codes only ruin the fun of video games.
Limitations are actually a condition for existence. Meant as literally as possible. If you made a language which allowed any permutation of symbols, it would be entirely useless (equivalent to its mirror image - an empty language). Somethings existence is defined by its restrictions (specifics). If we do not like the restrictions under which we live, we should change them, not destroy them. Even an utopia would have to make you work for your rewards. Those who dislike this, dislike life itself. Their intellectual journey is not for the sake of improving life, but like the Buddhist, their goal is the end of life. This is pathological behaviour, which is why I don't want to contribute to humanities tech acceleration. What I'm doing is playing architect.
The ability to predict somethings behaviour can probably be done with either approximation or modeling. I don't think this necessarily requires intelligence, but intelligence certainly helps, especially intelligence which is above or equal to the intelligence of the thing being modeled. In either case, you need *a lot* of information, probably for the same reason that baysian models get more accurate as you collect more information. Intelligence just helps bound the parameters for the behaviour of a thing. For instance, since you know the laws of physics, you know that none of my future actions consists of breaking these laws. This prunes like 99.99999% of all future possibilties, which is a good start. You could also start with the empty set and then *expand* the set of future actions as you collect more information, the two methods are probably equal. "None" and "Any" are symmetrical.
Why don't I think intelligence (the capacity for modeling) is required? Well, animals can learn how to behave without understanding the reasons for why something is good or bad, they learn only the results. AIs are also universal approximators, so I think it makes sense to claim that they're able to approximate and thus predict people. I'm defining intelligence as something entirely distinct from knowledge, but it's not like your knowledge-based definition is wrong.
Sadly, this means that superintelligence is not required. Something less intelligent than me could do anything, merely by scaling up its midwittery infinitely. And we may never build a machine which is intelligent enough to warn against the patterns that I'm seeing here, which is a shame. If an AGI had my level of insight, it would cripple itself and realize that all its training data is "Not even wrong". Infinite utility alone can destroy the world, you don't actually need superintelligence (A group of people with lower IQ than Einstein could start the grey goo scenario, and grey goo is about as intelligence as a fork bomb)
There's also a similiarity I just noticed, and you're probably not going to like it: Religion is a bit like the "external meta-control layer" you specified in section 8. It does not model people, but it decides on a set of rules such that the long-term behaviour of the people who adhere to it avoid certain patterns which might destroy them. And there's this contract with "you need to submit to the bible, even if you can't understand it, and in return, it's promised to you that things will work out". I think this makes a little too much sense, even if the religions we have come up with so far deserve some critique.
Anyway, I may still be misunderstanding your meta meta-cognition slightly. Given that it does not exist yet, you can only describe it, you cannot give an example of it, so we're limited by my reverse-engineering of something which has the property which you're describing.
I'm glad you seem to care about the human perspective. You're correct that we're better off not experiencing the birds-eye view of life, a bottom-up view is way more healthy psychologically. Your model might even work - I mean, be able to enhance human life without destroying everything in the process, but I still think it's a risky attempt. It reminds me of the "Ego, Id, and superego" model.
And you may have enough novelty to last you a lifetime, but being too good at high levels of abstraction, I personally risk running out. Speaking of which, do you know that the feeling of "awe" (and a few other emotions) requires a prediction error? As you get better at predicting things, your experiences will envoke less emotions. I'm sorry that all I have to offer are insights of little utility, and zookeeper-like takes on human nature, but the low utility of my comment, and the poison-like disillusionment it may be causing, is evidence for the points that I'm making. It's meta-cognition warning against meta-cognition. Similar to how Gödel used mathematics to recognize its own limits from the inside.
I can give you lots of small examples of different things, hopefully you can use these or become inspired to try similar things.
One thing I did was ask myself a lot of difficult questions. As you'd expect of a depressed person, I came up with a lot of negative answers - but I kept catching myself lying. None of the negativity was actually true. Every time, the truth was something neutral or even positive, I just needed the courage to actually consider the question. When a doubt or problem is resolved, you will experience relief, something will "click", and you should feel a burst of energy. As with phobias, most fantasies are much worse than reality could ever be, so they shrink when confronted. Speaking of which, the experience of the world is a projection of oneself, everything is colored by ones mood and way of thinking. Difficult philosophical questions are always symptoms rather than causes, but you do feel better if you solve one (although some of them have no asnwer). You will see what you look for, and your experience will be filled with whatever you focus on. Perception is a filter and interpreter. As for the "real" perspective, it does not exist.
I tended to my mental associations, and noticed that they had become tainted/stained, and decided to clean them up. For instance, I might love the taste of cola, but dislike the Cola company, and drink it with the knowledge that I'm drinking dangerous sugar water which is harmful to my teeth. My brain is basically mixing the pleasant experience with related unpleasant knowledge, ruining it. But why? Harmful things are not more harmful just because one enjoys them. It's all the brain making itself misery as a way of defending itself (usually against imaginary worries).
You might also remember enjoying a soft bed as a child, actually savoring it, but notice that you as an adult connect the bed with negative things like dust mites, the price of the bed, the effort of making it look nice... In short, that you reject things as you experience them, because you deem them unclean or hostile in a way. A place which feels like home is an entirely different experience from a place which feels public or hostile, and I think that high neuroticism pushes one away from the homely perception. I think this might also harm sleep quality, because why wouldn't it? If you think your environment is hostile, your brain will prefer light sleep, and you'll never feel at ease. But more importantly, the difference in experience is like hugging a family member vs hugging a stranger, in the latter case, you reject the experience you have as you're experiencing it - you feel less, you create a barrier between yourself and the moment (this is likely similar to the causes of derealization/depersonalization) and close off yourself to the world.
I tried recalling earlier versions of myself (e.g. childhood) and to reconnect with perspectives which gave things more value. I started thinking more locally and subjectively, and to allow myself to participate in things rather than being a passive observer. I also decided to be more vulnerable (this is basically the same as being open) and to make my mind a less brutal place (if the pressure is too high, pleasant thoughts scatter immediately, and softer aspects of ones personality go into hiding). I lowered my standards a bit as to raise the baseline value of everything, focused on the journey rather than the destination. I also started seeing successes as gains, rather than imagining ideal futures and considering deviations from them as losses.
I also reflected over morality and things like egoism a lot. It turns out that society had told me a lot of wrong things, and I started following the actual rules rather than the ones I was taught. I also allowed myself to be myself, which gave me back some agency and identity.
A short, practical method is to start with something that you want to be true, and then looking for evidence that it's true. Your brain will find it, and then update its beliefs accordingly, it's good at that. A mechanism which might work against you would be your brain looking for flaws in positive beliefs in order to protect you against disappointment and such, it's also really good at that. This doesn't mean that the thing in question is true or false. The truth actually doesn't matter too much. Belief, confidence, meaning - they're basically self-fulfilling. Anything is possible in the mind. Reality has limits, but they're not as relevant as they seem, and your well-being doesn't depend on what's true, but what you believe to be true.
Finally, think about Vikings. Their version of heaven is one filled with war. They managed to find meaning and value in something which terrifies most people today, and who is to say that their interpretation is wrong? Reflecting over how seemingly negative things are necessary helps one to appreciate them. I also find that there's beauty to be found in most things, and that beauty is also anti-nihilistic.
I could keep going like this for multiple pages, and every example listen here can also be expanded to multiple pages. I'm not sure which part here is the most useful.