I think pain is a little bit different than that. It's the contrast between the current state and the goal state. This constrast motivates the agent to act, when the pain of contrast becomes bigger than the (predicted) pain of acting.

As a human, you can decrase your pain by thinking that everything will be okay, or you can increase your pain by doubting the process. But it is unlikely that you will allow yourself to stop hurting, because your brain fears that a lack of suffering would result in a lack of progress (some wise people contest this, claiming that wu wei is correct).

Another way you can increase your pain is by focusing more on the goal you want to achieve, sort of irritating/torturing yourself with the fact that the goal isn't achieved, to which your brain will respond by increasing the pain felt by the contrast, urging action.

Do you see how this differs slightly from your definition? Chronic pain is not a continuous reduction in agency, but a continuous contrast between a bad state and a good state, which makes one feel pain which motivates them to solve it (exercise, surgery, resting, looking for painkillers, etc). This generalizes to other negative feelings, for instance to hunger, which exists with the purpose to be less pleasant than the search for food is, such that you seek food.

I warn you that avoiding negative emotions can lead to stagnation, since suffering leads to growth (unless we start wireheading, and making the avoidance of pain our new goal, because then we might seek hedonic pleasures and intoxicants)

That's a great example of something which doesn't follow the dynamics that I mentioned! I think that your example relates to the dynamics of cults and religions. They do blend into politics a little bit as they're fed by a distrust in the system and in authorities in general. But I agree that the earth being flat would be a strange thing to lie about, unlike microchips, electromagnetic harassment, UFOs, lizard-people, and the cure of cancer.

There's other related ideas like "secret knowledge", but at this level, we're practically talking about symptoms of paranoid skizophrenia. But flat earthers seem more common than the rate of skizophrenia would suggest, so I'm not sure how to explain this gap.

Maybe these "independent thinkers" just hate authority, by which I mean that they're not the non-conformists that they appear to be. But being entirely alone in ones beliefs is quite painful, so if the only group which shares ones hatred of authority believes that the earth is flat, maybe the desire to fit in is strong enough that one deceive themselves. And people who believe in one conspiracy seem likely to believe in multiple theories, which is very likely an important piece of information if you want to understand these people.

Another guess is that nihilism is too painful. You know that "I want to believe" poster? I think we should take the word "want" literally. If you can't believe in god, but find the idea of an inert, material universe too painful to bear, you will look for signs of magic or anything interesting. Luck, karma, aura, chakra, fate, - anything to spice up your life, anything to add additional meaning and possibilities to life. A large-scale conspiracy could fill this need. You'd also go from being a crazy loser to being a warrior fighting against the corrupt, deceptive system. In other words, a conspiracy like this being true would elevate the importance of the individual.

It all depends on the topic. It's unlikely that the consensus about objective fields like mathematics or physics are wrong. The more subjective, controversial, and political something is, and the more profit and power lies in controlling the consensus, the more skepticism is appropriate.

The bias on Wikipedia (used as an example) is correlated in this manner, CW topics have a lot of misinformation, while things that people aren't likely to feel strongly about are written more honestly.

If some redpills or blackpills turned out to be true, or some harsh-sounding aspects of reality related to discrimination, selection, biases or differences in humans turned out to be true, or some harsh philosophy like "suffering is good for you", "poverty is negatively correlated with virtuous acts" or "People unconsciously want to be ruled" turned out to be true, would you hear about it from somebody with a good reputation?

I also think it's worth noting that both the original view and the contrarian view might be overstated. That education isn't useless nor as good as we make it out to be. I've personally found myself annoyed at exaggerations like "X is totally safe, it never has any side-effects" or "People basically never do Y, it is less likely than being hit by lightning" (despite millions of people participating because it's relevant for their future, thousands of which are mentally ill by statistic necessity). This has made me want to push back, but the opposing evidence is likely exaggerated or cherry-picked as well, since people feel strongly about various conflicts.

The optimization target is Truth only to the extent that Truth is rewarded. If something else has a higher priority, then the truth will be distorted. But due to the broken-windows theory, it might be better to trust society too much rather than too little. I don't want to spread doubt, it might be harmful even in the case that I'm right.

Thanks for your reply!

I do have access, I just felt like waiting and replying here. By the way, if I comment 20 times on my shortform, will the rate-limit stop? This feels like an obvious exploit in the rate-limiting algorithm, but it's still possible that I don't know how it works.

It is to gatekeep in service of keeping lesswrong's quality high

Then outright banning would work better than rate-limiting without feedback like this. If people contribute in good faith, they need to know just what other people approve of. Vague feedback doesn't help alignment very much. And while an eternal september is dangerous, you likely don't want a community dominated by veteran users who are hostile to new users. I've seen this in videogame communities and it leads to forms of stagnation.

It confuses me if you got 10 upvotes for the contents of your reply (I can't find fault with the writing, formatting and tone), but it's easily explained by assuming that users here don't act much differently than they do on Reddit, which would be sad.

I already read the new users guide. Perhaps I didn't put it clearly enough with "I think people should take responsibility for their words", but it was the new users guide which told me to post. I read the "Is LessWrong for you?" section, and it told me that LessWrong was likely for me. I read the "well-kept garden" post in the past and found myself agreeing with its message. This is why I felt mislead and why I don't think linking these two sections makes for a good counter-argument (after all, I attempted to communicate that I had already taken them into account). I thought LW should take responsibility for what it told me, as trusting it is what got me rate-limited. That's the core message, the rest of my reply just defends my approach of commenting.

For issues interesting enough to have this problem, there is no ground source of truth that humans can access

In order not to be misunderstood completely, I'd need a disclaimer like this at the top of every comment I make, which is clearly not feasible:

Humanity is somewhat rational now, but our shared knowledge is still filled with old errors which were made before we learned how to think. Many core assumptions are just wrong. But if these beliefs are corrected, then the cascade would collapse some of the beliefs that people hold dear, or touch upon controversial subjects. The truth doesn't stand a chance against politics, morality and social norms. Sadly, if you want to prevent society from collapsing, you will need to grapple a bit with these three subjects. But that will very likely lead to downvotes.

A lot of things are poorly explained, but nonetheless true. Other things are very well argued, but nonetheless false. "Manifesting the future by visualizing it" is pseudoscience, but it has a positive utility. "We must make new laws to keep everyone safe" sounds reasonable, but after 1000 iterations it should have dawned on us that the 1001th law isn't going to save us. I think that the reasonable sentence would net you positive karma on here, while the pseudoscience would get called worthless.

My logical intelligence is much higher than my verbal - and most people who are successful in social and academic areas of life are the complete opposite. Nonetheless, some of us can see patterns that other people just can't. Human beings also have a lot in common with AI, we're blackboxes. Our instincts are discriminatory and biased, but only because people who weren't went extinct. Those who attempt to get rid of biases should first know what they are good for (Chesterton's fence). But I can't see a single movement in society advocating for change which actually understands what it's doing. But people don't like hearing this.
As of right now, the blackbox (intuition, instinct, etc) is still smarter than the explainable truth. This will change as people are taught how to disregard the blackbox and even break it. But this also goes against the consensus (in a way that I assume it will be considered "bad quality". Some people might upvote what they disagree with, but I don't think that goes for many types of disagreement)

And I'm also only human. Rate-limited users are perhaps the bottom 5% of posters? But I'm above that. I'm just grappling with subjects which are beyond my level. You told me to read the rules, that's a lot easier. I could also get lots of upvotes if I engaged with subjects that I'm overqualified for. But like with AGI, some subjects are beyond our abilities, but I don't think we can't afford to ignore them, so we're forced to make fools of ourselves trying.

Am I correct that you consider the past worse because people suffered more in the past? That's not the metric I focus on. I'm not speaking against either suffering nor your dislike of it, both of these are human things. My problem with mathematical optimization is that it seems to overwrite what's human with something inhuman. The modern world primarily seems moral because it's profitable to pretend to be moral. A charity is more likely to donate 10% of its profits and re-invest 90% into marketing itself than it is to donate 90% of its profits to those who need it.

The past certainly was harsher, but it felt more... Human. If the king pressured you in the past, the kings personal values and quirks would have had an influence. The modern society seems far more soulless. If people treat you poorly now it's mainly because doing so seems profitable to them, and not because they hate you. Considered aesthetically, human suffering still has meaning, whereas determinism forced by mathematical optimization does not. I do not wish to minimize suffering, not even my own. It's part of life. But I cannot accept a reduction in life, even though a reduction of suffering follows. Life is more important. Whoever disagrees with this is not healthy (as their own existence isn't the priority)

From my observation, most people, yourself included, believe something like this:
The world was awful 200 years ago compared to now, and the more modern a country is, the better the standards of living. Thus, the world is better now and those who idolize the past have something seriously wrong with them. But hear me out, this kind of thinking doesn't seem to be based on facts, but by naive preferences that we consider good, but which may actually harm us. The reduction of suffering is a poor optimization target. I'd suggest "health" if I still had some faith that society knew what this word meant (they seem to think that zoo animals are healthier than those in the wild)

How does the rate of mental illness correlate with modernity? Does Africa have terrible mental health whereas the modern society has the best mental health humanity has achieved so far? Doesn't seem like it to me.
Here's a graph on anxiety, it seems to suggest that lower-middle-income countries have better mental health than high-income countries:
https://assets.ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/anxiety-disorders-prevalence-males-vs-females.svg

I don't think we have statistics for the mental health for the 1800s and 1900s, but I think the numbers were better than you'd expect them to be.
I can't prove that we have less freedom of choice today, but they basically had no surveillance, no log files, no CCTVs, no modern tech, etc. Even if other people ruled over you, monitoring you closely wasn't worth the resources. I think there has been a strong decrease in meaning and human agency, and that this has had profound negative effects. The death of god can still be overcome as long as valence (hedonic tone) and human experience isn't dominated by objective metrics in the evaluation of future actions/paths. Being rather intelligent (and autistic to boot), I inadvertently disillusion myself, but the problem is getting bad enough that more people are noticing it. People want to be deceived, but even career-actors like salesmen and politicians are repulsively fake. Other intoxicants (like video games) are popular, but with the recent injection of real-life politics into various artforms, they're no longer an escape.

Let me try to summarize the conclusion: Subjective metrics and human choice is being killed by 'objective' metrics, and the world is increasingly disillusioned. This is partly due to science particially replacing religion as the highest, and because the world is so transparent information-wise that optimal choices become visible, which puts great pressure on people to adopt meta-strategies. The negative psychological effects are many, including nihilism and the feeling of "not living fully" (since agency appears to be a core psychological need). The world is increasingly moloch-ian and due to the "objectivity" of metrices like profits, and society teaching us that subjectivity is bad, humans even replace their own preferences with what's hostile to their own humanity. (and overcoming nihilism requires believing in what's subjective rather than seeking external validation)

By the way, have you ever read about the rat utopia experiments? (keyword 'behavioral sink')

I can only comment every 48 hours, so I can't write multiple comments such that I only communicate what concerns the person I'm responding to. Engaging is optional, no pressure from me (perhaps from yourself or the community?). I'm n=1 but still part of the sample of rate-limited users, so my case generalizes to the extent that I overlap with other people who are rate-limited (now or in the future)

I think people should take responsibility for their words, - if the real rules are unwritten, then those who broke them just did as they were told. The rules pretend to be based on objective metrics like "quality" rather than subjective virtues like following the consensus (which will feel objective from the inside for, say, 95% of people). There's no pain from my end, but it's easier in general to accept punishment when a reason is given or there's a piece of criticism which the offending person will have to admit might be valid. Staff are just human too, but some of the reasoning seems lazy. New users are not "entitled to a reason" for being punished? But the entire point of punishment is teaching, and there's literally no learning without feedback. Is giving feedback not advantageous to both parties?

By the way, the rate-limiting algorithm as I've understood it seems poor. It only takes one downvoted comment to get limited, So it doesn't matter if a user leaves one good comment and one poor comment, or if they write 99 good comments and one poor comment. Older accounts seems exempt, but even if older accounts write comments worth of rate-limiting then the rules are too harsh, and if they don't, then there's no justification for making them except from these rules. (I'm aware the punishment is not 100% automated though).
Edit: I'm clearly confused about the algorithm. Is it: iff ∃(poor comment) ∈ (most recent 20 comments) -> rate limited from time of judgement until t+20 days? this seems wrong too.

My comments can be shorter or easier to understand, but not both. Most people will communicate big ideas by linking to them, linking 20 pages is much more acceptable than writing them in a comment. But these are my own ideas, there's no links. The rest of the issues might be differences in taste rather than quality. Going against the consensus is *probably* enough to get one rate-limited, even if they're correct, so if the website becomes an echo chamber, it can only be solved by somebody with a good reputation voicing their concerns from the inside (where it's the most difficult to notice).

I'm one of the weirder users, though, I'm sure to be misunderstood. It worries me more that the other users were rate-limited. I can't imagine a justification for doing so. If justifying it is easy, I think an explanation is proper, any user could drop it and mention it. If only the mod team can tell why these users were rate-limited, then it follows that the users made no obvious mistakes, from which it also follows that there's very little that the targets (and even observers) can learn from all this.

Finally - I actually respect gatekeeping and high standards, but such rules should be visible. "When in Rome" - yeah, but what if the sign says "welcome to Italy"?. And I'm not convinced (thought I'd like to be) that I was punished by high standards rather than petty reasons like conformity, political values, or preferences owning to a lack of self-actualization.

It's indeed an interesting conversation! But possibly too broad. You can continue to engage if it interests you, but don't feel pressured to reply further if it's too much.

The "solved" aspect is indeed my primary concern. On a related note, there's a few other things about our way of advancing the modern world which seems to oppose The Fun Theory Sequence, including modern values. The modern society is awful at psychology because an understanding of it would conflict with our moral values (and conflict with many ideologies). What I think is a great argument for this is the Blank Slate theory and the controversy of things like IQ tests and other controversial things that most intellectuals are aware of but avoid getting into.

"Reducing information" is not what I want to do exactly. I want to reduce the access to information, not the information inherent in the system. The latter would make the problem worse (simpler things are solved faster).

I think most of the world is locked down by molochian restrictions, and that the rest is to follow. Look at this process for instance:
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/

It did not happen just 15 years ago. But every year, the process seems to go faster, and the initial stage seems to increase. The rule-breakers vs regulation race is never included, rules and regulations are rarely reversed, and we never achieve the safety with which the law is argued.
 

The main way we avoid decay is that, when things start sucking too much, people jump ship and find an alternative. Like this, we cycle through different platforms over time and leave once they suck enough (MSN, Skype, Discord). But recently the decay is at the upper levels, which form top-down restrictions.
On LW, we're restricted by international law, then the national laws of the countries in which the servers are hosted, then probably by local laws? then the laws of the hosting company, then by the website/staff. The upper layers dominate the lower layers. So if the top becomes tyrannical or degenerate, the entire thing does. Another example: You can do anything as a developer, but you have two main app stores to choose from, and they're restricting you and your app is completely transparent to them.
Notice how we don't control our computers, browsers or phones anymore? If you have complete freedom within a strongly bounded area, then you have no freedom at all.
What we have now is freedom by obscurity. I dare claim this is where our greatest freedom lies. I believe that (for example) TheMotte is only allowed to exist because it's relatively unknown. We are only getting away with things because most laws aren't worth enforcing and because we aren't caught. According to Google, 46% of people admit to speeding. Your phone or GPS doesn't automatically notify the police just yet, you're safe because the information remains with you.
I'm glad you still get free things, but isn't that technically illegal? It's untaxed and off-record, just too minor to matter. But we'll be able to automate minor things soon.
Another kind of information obscurity is privacy, but that's rapidly disappearing as well.

Moving on to specifics. I think it's a tautology that those with more power rule those with less. But this is still a human kind of ruling. They don't know the most efficient way of ruling others, and they mistreat those with less power by their own free will. It's not a meta strategy of "Mistreat peasants by degree X for Y% increased profits". It's like comparing chess of 500 years ago to chess of today, you're still optimizing, but you're not thinking for yourself as much anymore, you're memorizing other peoples discoveries. At 100% completion, chess will stop being a game, it becomes a choice, probably "Do you want a draw or do you want to lose?". You can choose anything you want, but there's only one valid choice. I think this is far more molochian, or the "real moloch".

I think things have gotten far worse. But I dismiss the "objective" metrics that people are using. Look up the mental health statistics.
Actually, let me give an example which likely explains the difference: A tiger in zoo is safer than a tiger in the wild. By 'objective' metrics, the tiger has it better. It has food, water, shelter. In the same way, we have it "better" now. But if you ask me, that tiger is less healthy than a tiger in the wild by basically every metric of health. I attribute this difference in thinking to the world "poisoning" your training data with poor interpretations. Every reply I've gotten so far is about how the modern world is better (because they consider it more moral, because it's more liberal).

Even if you could break out of the restrictions yourself, it's almost impossible to bring other people with you. Most of them are already beyond repair psychologically. The further somebody is from enlightenment, the more stupid enlightenment will seem. Somebody with 20 past partners is unlikely to feel deep love again. Somebody with a porn addiction is unlikely to feel a spark with their partner. Somebody whose life revolves around politics is unlikely to judge people by their character holistically again. People who scroll social media all day is unlikely to concentrate enough on you to see past your surface, they can't even try without getting bored and distracted. Those who have been acting too long no longer remember their "true selves" (happened to a friend). Naivety and innocence are resources, easy to spend, hard to recover. The squandering of such resources seem to be accelerating. Harder still is inhibition, self-censorship, nihilism, and demoralization. I can cure myself of them, but others? As arrogant as I am, I still have to admit it's hard. If nothing makes you feel surprise or wonder anymore, it's because you world-model is mostly correct (low prediction-errors), so I don't think more knowledge will help.

The world is unsolved but bounded, and the slightly unbounded environments are mostly fringe or out of sight, and unbounded people are now rare and usually not older than 22 unless they're social outcasts or high-IQ people with spiritual interests whose openness and curiousity hasn't led them to over-indulgence and disillusionment. Even the ratio of young people is decreasing. I will probably be fine for a while more myself, but I will probably also be alone. There's too many superstimuli in society, and society is working hard on removing social stigma from all of them (and from unhealthy practices in general, as society has forgotten why the past had strict social regulations against these things).

Thanks for your response! And great examples, I will address them in the second half of my reply! I tried to be brief.

The human condition has been getting better over history.

This seems like a moral evaluation rather than a mechanical one?
My point is that, for instance, dating has degenerated into something akin to job-interviews or judging people against checklists of superficial things. This change in perspective is less human, and I think it results from people getting too used to dating, which is a first-world problem.

200 years ago, I believe dating was much more natural, and that people didn't have the required experience to treat human interactions like an optimization game or spreadsheet calculation. It requires information and time to get adverse psychological results from experience. (At the very least, they could use their own judgement for optimization, they weren't slaves to some universal meta)
Another example is what social media is doing to human interaction. It's getting much more.. Performative. I'm trying to understand the underlying dynamics of this (both mathematical and psychological)
Another example would be the beginners mindset, vs. the often cynical expert. Overexposure makes one blind to the value of things, and they turn vulgar. The psychological aspects are even true for couples who have been married many years, there's often no spark anymore, only fighting.
I think this is necessarily getting worse over time as population density grows and society turns more scientific and objective. That "old married couple" or "cynical expert" effect happens faster and with more things. I bet you've often heard "Things were more simple back then".

>the direct result of Molochian competition

Now for your examples!

A poor person is forced to work for poor pay if that's the best choice he has, that is molochian. But were slave-owners forced to have slaves by moloch? Were they locked in a game where they didn't have any choices available? As I've understood the current laws, companies are now forced to maximize shareholder profits, but in the past, I think one had a choice here. Same with kings and warlords of the past, I expect that they had more freedom of choice. (I believe) They were like somebody with 100 hours in a new strategy game doing their best (rather than somebody with 10K hours into a strategy game just crunching the numbers). Were people forced to go to war (as an obvious optimal strategy), or did nationalism and concepts like honor and bravery motivate people? I think it's the latter, but I'm admittedly not very knowledgeable about history. 

Over time, the world seems to have gotten more bureaucratic, this limits freedom of choice. Increasingly automated systems do too. The world seems more deterministic than ever. In a traditional society, a woman running a store might give you a bottle of water for free because she's kind, she's not as bound by regulations. These actions seem to be impossible for larger entities, only small-scale businesses are this "human". But both companies and internet websites has transitioned from "many but small" to "few but large", it seems to be a natural development over time.

All the "negative" aspects here seem to correlate with information, technology, connectness, centralization and other such things which increase over time in human socities. But maybe we're also more disillusioned than ever. If you strip a videogame of its graphics, you will have adverse psychological effects to what I listed, despite the mechanisms staying the same. Perhaps I feel that this artless wireframe view of the world is profane and cynical/nihilistic. 

Well, this website is called "LessWrong", so conforming to subjective values doesn't seem all that important, and I didn't expect to be punished for not doing so. I've read the rules, they say "Don't think about it too hard" and "If we don't like it, we will give you feedback", but it seems like the rate-limiting was the feedback. They mention rate-limiting if you get too much negative karma, but this isn't exactly true. My karma is net-positive, the negatives are just from older accounts, which seem to weight higher.

My personal bar is heavily based on the ratio of effort:value

While I agree, I want to ask you how many grade-school essays are worth one PhD thesis? If you ask me, even a million isn't enough. If you "go up a level", you basically render the previous level worthless. Raising the level will mean that one will make more mistakes, but when one is correct, the value is completely unlike just playing it safe and stating what's already proven (which is an easy way to get karma which I don't see the value of)

At a personal level, I kind of enjoy the kindness you show in looking down on me, and comments like yours are even elegant and pleasing to read, but I don't think this is the most valuable aspect of comments, since topics presented here (like AGI) concern the future of humanity. The pace here is a little boring, and I do believe I'm being misunderstood (what I assume goes without saying and prune from my comments is probably the parts that people would nod along with and upvote me for, simply because they agree and enjoy reading what they already know).

And not to be rude, but couldn't it be that some of the perceived noise is a false positive? I can absolutely defend everything I've posted so far. I also don't belive it's a virtue to keep quiet about the truth just because it's unpleasant.

they may still be fall below the necessary return-on-effort

I think the extinction of human nature (and the dynamics involved) is quite important. Same with the sustainability of immaterialistic aspects of life and the possible degeneration of psychological development (resulting in populations which are unable to stand up for themselves). On this very comment section, another user writes "I sort of accidentally killed some parts of the animal that I am" as a consequence of reading the sequences. This is also one of the things that I've shown concern about in my comments, and which has been voted "false" by regular users.

My "worst" comment this month is [5,-5] and about Tiktok. I think people dislike it because of their personal bias and because they're naive (naive as in the kind of people who believe "somebody think of the children!" is a genuine concern rather than a propaganda tactic). But admittedly, only the first paragraph was sufficiently clear and correct. Perhaps you will have to be less kind to me? I cannot guess my faults, so somebody would have to put aside the pity and be more direct with me