What I Learned (Conclusion To "The Sense Of Physical Necessity")

post by LoganStrohl (BrienneYudkowsky) · 2024-03-20T21:24:37.464Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

This is the concluding post in a sequence that demonstrates a complete naturalist study, specifically a study of query hugging (sort of), as described in The Nuts and Bolts of Naturalism [? · GW]. For context on this sequence, see the intro post [LW · GW].

Here is where my conceptualization of query hugging stands currently. It is still under construction, but this is what happens when I try to describe it right now.

The framing of “Hug the Query [LW · GW]” suggests that in order to stay close to the issue, most of what’s needed is to not get distracted by less relevant things. It assumes that the reader is aware of a sense of how close to the issue they are (or, as Eliezer might put it, that they are tracking their location in The Great Causal Web), and then cautions them to heed that sense as they evaluate arguments.

I affectionately imagine Eliezer tearing at his hair while composing his essay. “Why do they keep getting distracted?! If they would just stay on track! It’s a theorem of graph theory, for godsakes!”

(My model of Eliezer often struggles with accidentally overestimating his audience on some unusual axis.)

I now think that Past Eliezer wrote slightly the wrong essay. It was an excellent essay, but it presented a solution to a different problem than the one I suspect people actually tend to have. 

(I talked with Present Eliezer about this, and he seemed to agree with me; but I’m only describing my own view here. He may see things differently.)

In my study, I found that the thing to hug is not really a “query” in the sense of a question, a symbolically expressed topic; rather, it’s 1) whatever physically necessitates the answer be what it is, and (simultaneously) 2) whatever value deep in my heart cares about the topic in the first place.

The central skill behind query hugging—behind remaining close to the issue at hand—is a certain kind of awareness. Specifically, it is awareness of my sense of the physical necessity of things: my sense of the physical parts clicking together, of inevitability, the sense that tightens my core as I watch my cat knock a water glass off of a shelf and I know it will spill on my keyboard because I can see that there is nothing in the way. The prerequisite for query hugging is the ability to sink my guts into the physical systems. From there, I just need to be aware of what I personally care about, without separating myself from those systems.

My contact with those systems must be intimate and consistent. It must be like the contact that the soles of my bare feet make with the ground as I walk through a dark room in the middle of the night, balancing easily with every step. 

And then, once I have accomplished that–once I have sunk my guts into the causal relationships surrounding whatever I care about—no further effort is required. I don’t need to watch out for getting distracted. I don’t need to remind myself that less central evidence cannot help me update. I only need to listen for the spark of luster in my chest that activates when I dance in close embrace with the world. Following my sense of physical necessity toward what I care about is the entire skill. 

Let's consider the scenario from the original essay "Hug the Query" from this perspective. The Wright Brothers say, "Our plane will fly," but Lord Kelvin claims it won't. In one hand you have their aeronautical calculations (which you're able to follow), and in the other you have your recognition of Lord Kelvin as a scientific authority.

If you follow something like a generalized sense of anticipation, which compresses many past experiences of experts being right about things, then you might believe that the plane won't fly. In that case, you'd be going wrong by ignoring your sense of physical necessity (or by not recognizing it in the first place). 

You might also feel a strong moral or otherwise-social pressure, thinking that a good and reasonable sort of person would defer to the expert. At first you cared because flying is rad, but now you care about being reasonable or foolish. It's easy to become vulnerable to this sort of value substitution when your guts aren't tracking the inevitability of the physical systems.

To make the correct prediction about the Wright Brothers, you need to feel the necessity that arises as you comprehend the causal relationships that the equations describe. You need to recognize that you perceive the apparent inevitability of manned flight. If you do that, I think you're more likely to try explaining things to Lord Kelvin yourself than to blindly defer to his authority as respected scientist.

It seems to me that Eliezer navigates by his sense of causal relationships about as automatically as he breathes. It’s likely a reflexive, involuntary mental motion [LW · GW]. It probably just didn’t occur to him that other people might lack this disposition.

But in my case—and, I expect, for nearly all readers who need the essay!—the implicit assumption was false. I was not yet able to be aware of any such sense in a way that would allow me to either heed that sense, or ignore it. There was no “getting distracted”, because there was nothing for me to get distracted from. I was not yet aware of my sense of physical necessity.

Now I am.

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