Friend circles of mine – which, I should note, don’t to my knowledge overlap with the s-risks from AI researchers I know – do treat suicide as a perfectly legitimate thing you can do after deliberation, like abortion or gender-affirming surgery. So there’s no particular taboo there. Hence, maybe, why I also don’t recoil from considering that the future might be vastly worse than the present.
But it seems to be like a rationalist virtue not to categorically recoil from certain considerations.
Could you explain the self-fulfilling prophesy idea more, though? School was bad for me, but since then I’ve been hoping to live long enough with net positive valence to outweigh that time rather than trying to sabotage myself as a results. Then again it could be that there is some more complicated mechanism at work underneath, e.g., that oppression causes both thanatos (death wish) and low self-esteem, and that low self-esteem leads one to think that one doesn’t deserve good things if they come at a cost, so that things get worse and the thanatos increases. But in that example thanatos is a concomitant – there is no chain of causal arrows from thanatos to more thanatos…
My impression was that Freudian death wish is aggression in general, (mis)directed at the self. I’m not talking about that.
Friend circles of mine – which, I should note, don’t to my knowledge overlap with the s-risks from AI researchers I know – do treat suicide as a perfectly legitimate thing you can do after deliberation
I’m confused what you’re saying ,and curious. I would predict that this attitude toward suicide would indeed correlate with being open to discussing S-risks. Are you saying you have counter-data, or are you saying you don’t have samples that would provide data either way?
Could you explain the self-fulfilling prophesy idea more, though?
It’s basically like this: my experience is bad. If my experience is this bad, I’d rather not live. Can I make my experience good enough to be worth living? That depends on whether I work really hard or not. I observe that I am not working hard. Therefore I expect that my experience won’t get sufficiently better to be worth it. Therefore locally speaking it’s not worth it to try hard today to make my life better; I won’t keep that work up, and will just slide back. So my prediction that I won’t work to make my life better is correct and self-fulfilling. If I thought I would spend many days working to make my life better, then it would become worth it, locally speaking, to work hard today, because that would actually move the needle on chances of making life worth it.
School was bad for me, but since then I’ve been hoping to live long enough with net positive valence to outweigh that time rather than trying to sabotage myself as a results.
Surely you can see that this isn’t common, and the normal response is to just be broken until you die.
I’m confused what you’re saying, and curious. I would predict that this attitude toward suicide would indeed correlate with being open to discussing S-risks. Are you saying you have counter-data, or are you saying you don’t have samples that would provide data either way?
I was just agreeing. :-3 In mainstream ML circles there is probably a taboo around talking about AI maybe doing harm or AI maybe ending up uncontrollable etc. Breaking that taboo was, imo, a good thing because it allowed us to become aware of the dangers AI could pose. Similarly, breaking a taboo around talking about things worse than death can be helpful to become aware of ways in which we may be steering toward s-risks.
It’s basically like this
I see! I have a bunch of friends who would probably consider their lives not worth living. They often express the wish to not have been born or at least consider their current well-being level to be negative. But I think only one of them might be in such a negative feedback loop, and I’m probably misdiagnosing her here. Two of them are bedridden due to Long Covid and despite their condition have amassed a wealth of knowledge on virus-related medicine, probably by googling things on their phones while lying down for ten minutes at a time. Others have tried every depression drug under the sun. Other have multiple therapists. They are much more held back by access and ability than by motivation, even though motivation is probably also hard to come by in that state.
Surely you can see that this isn’t common, and the normal response is to just be broken until you die.
Idk, Harold and Maude is sort of like that. I’ve actually done a back-of-the-envelope calculation, which is perhaps uncommon, but the general spirit of the idea seems normal enough to me? Then again I could easily be typical-minding.
They are much more held back by access and ability than by motivation, even though motivation is probably also hard to come by in that state.
Sounds likely enough from your description. Most things are mostly not about self-fulfilling prophecies, life can just be sad / hard :(
I think that the feedback loop thing is a thing that happens; usually in a weakish form. I mean, I think it’s the cause of part of some depressions. Separately, even if it doesn’t happen much or very strongly, it could also be a thing that people are afraid of in themselves and in others, continuously with things like “trying to cheer someone up”.
Then again I could easily be typical-minding.
That’s my guess, to some extent, but IDK. I think we’d live in different, more hopeful world if you’re not (incorrectly) typical-minding here.
Interesting take!
Friend circles of mine – which, I should note, don’t to my knowledge overlap with the s-risks from AI researchers I know – do treat suicide as a perfectly legitimate thing you can do after deliberation, like abortion or gender-affirming surgery. So there’s no particular taboo there. Hence, maybe, why I also don’t recoil from considering that the future might be vastly worse than the present.
But it seems to be like a rationalist virtue not to categorically recoil from certain considerations.
Could you explain the self-fulfilling prophesy idea more, though? School was bad for me, but since then I’ve been hoping to live long enough with net positive valence to outweigh that time rather than trying to sabotage myself as a results. Then again it could be that there is some more complicated mechanism at work underneath, e.g., that oppression causes both thanatos (death wish) and low self-esteem, and that low self-esteem leads one to think that one doesn’t deserve good things if they come at a cost, so that things get worse and the thanatos increases. But in that example thanatos is a concomitant – there is no chain of causal arrows from thanatos to more thanatos…
My impression was that Freudian death wish is aggression in general, (mis)directed at the self. I’m not talking about that.
I’m confused what you’re saying ,and curious. I would predict that this attitude toward suicide would indeed correlate with being open to discussing S-risks. Are you saying you have counter-data, or are you saying you don’t have samples that would provide data either way?
It’s basically like this: my experience is bad. If my experience is this bad, I’d rather not live. Can I make my experience good enough to be worth living? That depends on whether I work really hard or not. I observe that I am not working hard. Therefore I expect that my experience won’t get sufficiently better to be worth it. Therefore locally speaking it’s not worth it to try hard today to make my life better; I won’t keep that work up, and will just slide back. So my prediction that I won’t work to make my life better is correct and self-fulfilling. If I thought I would spend many days working to make my life better, then it would become worth it, locally speaking, to work hard today, because that would actually move the needle on chances of making life worth it.
Surely you can see that this isn’t common, and the normal response is to just be broken until you die.
I was just agreeing. :-3 In mainstream ML circles there is probably a taboo around talking about AI maybe doing harm or AI maybe ending up uncontrollable etc. Breaking that taboo was, imo, a good thing because it allowed us to become aware of the dangers AI could pose. Similarly, breaking a taboo around talking about things worse than death can be helpful to become aware of ways in which we may be steering toward s-risks.
I see! I have a bunch of friends who would probably consider their lives not worth living. They often express the wish to not have been born or at least consider their current well-being level to be negative. But I think only one of them might be in such a negative feedback loop, and I’m probably misdiagnosing her here. Two of them are bedridden due to Long Covid and despite their condition have amassed a wealth of knowledge on virus-related medicine, probably by googling things on their phones while lying down for ten minutes at a time. Others have tried every depression drug under the sun. Other have multiple therapists. They are much more held back by access and ability than by motivation, even though motivation is probably also hard to come by in that state.
Idk, Harold and Maude is sort of like that. I’ve actually done a back-of-the-envelope calculation, which is perhaps uncommon, but the general spirit of the idea seems normal enough to me? Then again I could easily be typical-minding.
Sounds likely enough from your description. Most things are mostly not about self-fulfilling prophecies, life can just be sad / hard :(
I think that the feedback loop thing is a thing that happens; usually in a weakish form. I mean, I think it’s the cause of part of some depressions. Separately, even if it doesn’t happen much or very strongly, it could also be a thing that people are afraid of in themselves and in others, continuously with things like “trying to cheer someone up”.
That’s my guess, to some extent, but IDK. I think we’d live in different, more hopeful world if you’re not (incorrectly) typical-minding here.