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).
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).
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).