Posts
Comments
Update: Bob has recorded a 6-month follow-up here.
Why was this post tagged as boundaries/membranes? I'm inclined to remove the tag.
makes sense
works!
another weird bug is if i click the link i was just sent in my email, it brings me to a 403 Forbidden page (even though the URLs of this functional page and that 403 page look identical)
I've run two workshops at LightHaven and it's pretty unthinkable to run a workshop anywhere else in the Bay Area. Lightcone has really made it easy to run overnight events without setup
Yeah i'm confused about what to name it. we can always change it later i guess.
also let me know if you have any posts you want me to definitely tag for it that you think i might miss otherwise
Do we have a LessWrong tag for "hierarchical agency" or "multi-scale alignment" or something? Should I make one?
I just made a twitter list with accounts interested in hierarchical agency (or what i call "multi-scale alignment"). Lmk who should be added
Random but you might like this graphic I made representing hierarchical agency from my post today on a very similar idea. What would you change about it?
This was an impressive demonstation of Claude for interviews. Was this one take?
(Also what prompt did you use? I like how your Claude speaks.)
I'm glad you wrote this! I've been wanting to tell othres about ACS's research and finally have a good link
Great question, thanks!
I think you're correct in pointing towards the existence of basically-all-downside genetic conditions, but I still think these are in the minority. Moreover, even most of those don't create a big issue on the object level— compared to how people might feel about the issue as a result.
This argument doesn't extend to conditions like Huntington's, but if a person is missing a pinky finger, most of the issues the person is going to face are related to social factors and their own emotions, not the physical aspect.
I also just say this from experience helping others.
I did not say that depression is always a strategy for everyone.
I wrote about my own experience discovering “feelings in the body” here
Eliezer likes it but lesswrong doesn't
can someone explain to me why this is so controversial
What would you say that the main types of power are?
My list (for humans): physical security, financial security, social security, emotional security (this one you can only give yourself though)
In other cases, or for other reasons, they might be instead set up to demand results, and evaluate primarily based on results.
Why might it be set up like that? Seems potentially quite irrational. Veering into motivated reasoning territory here imo
Maybe, but that also requires that the other group members were (irrationally) failing to consider that the “attempt could've been good even if the luck was bad”.
In human groups, people often do gain (some) reputation for noble failures (is this wrong?)
I got the bidding idea from Kaj, and “if the mind is a group” is my preferred metaphor/simplification of multi-agent models of mind (writing about this soon). This metaphor naturally implies reputation, as I realized yesterday while working with a client. I don't know if there’s a name for the reputation idea; it may be original
Oh! The metaphor I've been using with my clients for the thing I think you're pointing at is reputation.
If the mind is a group (in this case a group of pattern predictors, but please also imagine it as a group of people), then ask yourself: How does a group of people (with no dictator) make a decision?
Well, they talk. They make bids.
Can one person use "willpower" and force the group to make a decision a particular way? Yes, if they make a strong enough bid and the rest of the group lets them. Why would the rest of the group let them? Reputation. But if they do that too many times with poor results, they lose their reputation and won't be able to dictate the group anymore. "Willpower" lost.
I suspect this happens in the mind among pattern predictors, too. (I believe @Kaj_Sotala has written about this somewhere wrt Global Workspace Theory? I found this tweet in the meantime.) If a certain part of your mind lose reputation with the others parts, that part will lose reputation and won't be able to make competitive bids anymore. That part's "willpower" has decreased.
- What other fields except finance have a tradition of reading weekly/daily news? Surely not chemistry, drug development, petroleum, fracking, …
- Maybe there actually is a Matt Levine of petroleum but we don't know?
I think it's true that people who have more power (whether emotional security or social status etc) generally have less muscle tension yea.
But that reminds me that I should check with my clients if they accidentally experience much less muscle tension
This reminds me… maybe muscle tension is a frequent solution to this problem?
Some context: Lately I've been wondering, Why do we often experience feelings as things in the body? For example, why do I feel anxiety in my chest rather than just “knowing” I'm anxious?
For example, my previous chronic neck pain seemed to be related to information that manifested in my neck:
I suspect the feeling in my neck represented the information "I have the choice to leave the social situation I'm in right now" and/or "I am disliking/suppressing myself."
Why might this feeling have manifested in my neck?
What if feelings use the body as a screen to communicate information with others? If you have a certain feeling in your chest, maybe others can see that.
BUT: What if a feeling represents information that your system doesn't want other people to know? Hostile telepaths problem.
Im my case:
The feeling represented the awareness that I was insecure, and there were probably situations (probably social situations) in which it partially benefited me to be partially unaware of the fact that I was insecure.
Well, in that case, your system could create muscle tension to "jam the signal"…
If the muscles are stiff, maybe they can't be used as a screen anymore.
I'm very glad you wrote this
I've come to think of it in terms of inferential distances
yeah probably something like that. I also wrote a little more about this in my blog post today.
People are experts on themselves. Given enough space and gentle enough questions from an active listener, they often have the capacity to solve their own problems.
yeah
it's much higher bandwidth and more efficient too
process the information where it is
oh cool!! i'm glad :-)
If anything, I suspect mental health is more tractable, with quicker feedback loops, and with more of a possibility of directly helping alignment[1] compared to physical health.
- ^
Why? I'll have to write a full post on this eventually, but the gist is: I suspect many social conflicts, such as those around AI, could dissolve if the underlying ego conflicts dissolved. Decision-makers who become more emotionally secure also become better at coordination. Improving physical health has much less of this effect imo.
Have you thought much about mental health?[1] Mental health seems to meet all of your same criteria. I say this because I'm currently working on this (and for alignment-like reasons).
- ^
Maybe "healthcare" includes mental health to you, but https://healthcareagents.com/ doesn't seem to mention it.
Plus some need to be loaded quite heavy, risking injury.
To be clear, by isometrics i mean pushing against immovable objects. (also see)
Do you have any thoughts on isometrics? They seem even quicker if so
ooh thx
please see the new version of the intro and read the full post
Thansks!
How about this? Edited the post:
Story time! I wanted to run a fun party: "Make 100% eye contact or get sent to jail!" But I didn’t want to force people to make eye contact… I wanted everyone to be genuinely comfortable! How?
Consider: Eye contact is effortless without emotional blocks. If you have trouble making eye contact, you’re probably held back by emotional blocks. And these blocks are probably to help you stay safe… so forcing eye contact could even be harmful!
So what if I helped attendees notice and integrate their blocks?
The Courage to be Disliked (Adlerian Psychology) is like a guide for orienting about your position in the agent hierarchy:
“You” are at the level of an individual human, largely autonomous relative to other humans [separation of tasks, boundaries]
“Below” you are subagents like individual unconscious predictions/parts, themselves agentic and trying their best [teleology]
“Above” you are superagents like groups and merging into a greater whole [community feeling]
Yeah for many people it was hard to both make eye contact and think at the same time. Some of them told me that this changed what they spoke about.
Personally I have a very hard time recalling the past or thinking very logically while making eye contact
i see
hm that's why i put "safely" werp
So all I needed to do was help everyone safely untangle their blocks ;)
bring those parts into dialogue with their blocks/resistance to eye contact, and watch what happens.
So, in a way, his avoiding eye contact was completely rational. (Or rather: locally optimal.) If he had crudely forced himself to make eye contact, it’s quite possible that he could’ve actually gotten hurt.
Next I asked him, “How would you like to manage those risks?”
Why was it just assumed that "emotional blocks" are bad though
Sorry, where in the post did I imply this? I tried to emphasize how they're locally optimal
ill add that to the post, thx
I just thought it'd be a fun party
Her main motivation was to make Thomas’ ideas more accessible to people.
thanks Chi!!
the results focus you're taking is likely creating other negative effects in the psyche that will have to be cleaned up later
could be, figuring this out
(not the rest of your body).
How do we know?
When you say vitamin A, do you literally mean vitamin A, or the similar potential-precursor compound found in plants that is often mistaken as vitamin A? See my other comment.
Hi, thanks for responding. You say:
Dietary vitamin A (beta carotene) is not the active form of vitamin A (retinoic acid), it needs to be converted into the active form by the body's enzymes.
It is possible to eat the active form of vitamin A, for example through animal sources like liver.
When I said vitamin A, I meant vitamin A (not the compound in plants that can be lossily converted into vitamin A).
So this doesn't answer the question IMO
thanks! There's a lot I don't post on LessWrong because I don't think it matches the vibe. Even this post has gotten some substantial downvotes
haha i didn't think
what becoming secure does to a mfer
would resonate on lesswrong