Quick sort-of-mod-note: There’s a common genre of First Post that I keep my eye out for as a moderator, where someone asks a bunch of confused questions about acausal extortion and seems really anxious. I often don’t approve those posts (mods have to manually approve someone before they can post)
I approved this one because at first glance it doesn’t seem to have the usual failure modes – it looks like you’ve done your homework and are just trying to reason through what is, to be fair, a kinda gnarly philosophical problem.
But I wanted to flag one possible failure mode I see a lot of, which is “people trapped in a kinda anxiety loop about acausal blackmail” who keep not being satisfied with any degree of clarification/reassurance, and keep finding new things to be worried about or insufficiently reassured by. And I think often in that case the best approach looks more like “take a deep breath and detach from it” than “think your way through the problem.”
Hi, thanks for your reply and for approving my post. I definitely get what you mean when you said “people trapped in a kinda anxiety loop about acausal blackmail”, and admittedly I do consider myself somewhat in that category. However, simply being aware of this doesn’t really help me get over my fears, since I am someone that really likes to hear concrete arguments about why stuff like this doesn’t work instead of just being satisfied with a simple answer. You said that you had to deal with this sort of thing a lot so I presume you’ve heard a bunch of arguments and scenarios like this, do you mind sharing the reasons why you do not worry about it?
What’s going on with this type of question? Is it emotional issues in your experience, or is there something about this problem that, not to put too fine a print on it, is essentially a lovecraftian horror scenario?
Hi, I think the reason why people like me freak out about things like this is because we tend to accept new ideas quite quickly (e.g. if someone showed me actual proof god is real I would abandon my 7 years of atheism in a heartbeat and become a priest) so it’s quite emotionally salient for me to imagine things like this. And simply saying “You’re worrying too much, find something else to do to take your mind off of things like this” doesn’t really help since it’s like saying to a depressed person “Just be happy, it’s all in your head.”
I think the better comparison with the depressed person is the depressed person saying “Life sucks because X”, and their friend tries to disprove X, but ultimately the person is still depressed and it wasn’t really about X in particular.
I have on my todo list to write (or have someone write) a post that’s trying to spell out why/how to chill out about this. Unfortunately it’s a fair amount of work, and I don’t expect whatever quick reason I give you to especially help.
I do generally think “Be careful about taking ideas seriously. It’s a virtue to be ready to take ideas seriously, but the general equilibrium where most people don’t take ideas too seriously was a fairly important memetic defense. I.e. most people believe in God, but they also don’t take it too seriously. The people who do take it seriously do a lot of damage. It’s dangerous to be half-a-rationalist. etc.”
I think one relevant insight is that you should weight the experience of your various multiverse-selves by their measure, and the fact that a teeny sliver of reality has some random thing happening to you isn’t very relevant.
Glad to hear you’re planning to write up a post covering stuff like this! I personally think it’s quite overdue, especially on a site like this which I suspect has an inherent selection effect on people who take ideas quite seriously like me. I don’t quite understand the last part of your reply though, I understand the importance of measure in decision making but like I said in my post, I thought if the blackmailer makes a significant number of simulations then indexical uncertainty could still be established since it could still have a significant effect on your future observer moments. Did I make a mistake anywhere in my reasoning?
My suggestion is to first make sure that your reasoning is sane. Free from sub-conscious effects leaking into it. Leaking-in meaning worrying interpretations being more salient or less rigorous reasoning in areas where feelings play a role.
Quick sort-of-mod-note: There’s a common genre of First Post that I keep my eye out for as a moderator, where someone asks a bunch of confused questions about acausal extortion and seems really anxious. I often don’t approve those posts (mods have to manually approve someone before they can post)
I approved this one because at first glance it doesn’t seem to have the usual failure modes – it looks like you’ve done your homework and are just trying to reason through what is, to be fair, a kinda gnarly philosophical problem.
But I wanted to flag one possible failure mode I see a lot of, which is “people trapped in a kinda anxiety loop about acausal blackmail” who keep not being satisfied with any degree of clarification/reassurance, and keep finding new things to be worried about or insufficiently reassured by. And I think often in that case the best approach looks more like “take a deep breath and detach from it” than “think your way through the problem.”
Hi, thanks for your reply and for approving my post. I definitely get what you mean when you said “people trapped in a kinda anxiety loop about acausal blackmail”, and admittedly I do consider myself somewhat in that category. However, simply being aware of this doesn’t really help me get over my fears, since I am someone that really likes to hear concrete arguments about why stuff like this doesn’t work instead of just being satisfied with a simple answer. You said that you had to deal with this sort of thing a lot so I presume you’ve heard a bunch of arguments and scenarios like this, do you mind sharing the reasons why you do not worry about it?
What’s going on with this type of question? Is it emotional issues in your experience, or is there something about this problem that, not to put too fine a print on it, is essentially a lovecraftian horror scenario?
Hi, I think the reason why people like me freak out about things like this is because we tend to accept new ideas quite quickly (e.g. if someone showed me actual proof god is real I would abandon my 7 years of atheism in a heartbeat and become a priest) so it’s quite emotionally salient for me to imagine things like this. And simply saying “You’re worrying too much, find something else to do to take your mind off of things like this” doesn’t really help since it’s like saying to a depressed person “Just be happy, it’s all in your head.”
I think the better comparison with the depressed person is the depressed person saying “Life sucks because X”, and their friend tries to disprove X, but ultimately the person is still depressed and it wasn’t really about X in particular.
I have on my todo list to write (or have someone write) a post that’s trying to spell out why/how to chill out about this. Unfortunately it’s a fair amount of work, and I don’t expect whatever quick reason I give you to especially help.
I do generally think “Be careful about taking ideas seriously. It’s a virtue to be ready to take ideas seriously, but the general equilibrium where most people don’t take ideas too seriously was a fairly important memetic defense. I.e. most people believe in God, but they also don’t take it too seriously. The people who do take it seriously do a lot of damage. It’s dangerous to be half-a-rationalist. etc.”
I think one relevant insight is that you should weight the experience of your various multiverse-selves by their measure, and the fact that a teeny sliver of reality has some random thing happening to you isn’t very relevant.
Glad to hear you’re planning to write up a post covering stuff like this! I personally think it’s quite overdue, especially on a site like this which I suspect has an inherent selection effect on people who take ideas quite seriously like me. I don’t quite understand the last part of your reply though, I understand the importance of measure in decision making but like I said in my post, I thought if the blackmailer makes a significant number of simulations then indexical uncertainty could still be established since it could still have a significant effect on your future observer moments. Did I make a mistake anywhere in my reasoning?
My suggestion is to first make sure that your reasoning is sane. Free from sub-conscious effects leaking into it. Leaking-in meaning worrying interpretations being more salient or less rigorous reasoning in areas where feelings play a role.
See The Treacherous Path to Rationality for some more aspects. You should be on stable footing before you approach the monsters.