John, I think you are still missing something regarding empathy and it would be good for you to be open to that possibility. This post is a nice clarification but it still makes me think you don’t get the thing in the same way I used to not get the thing with my ex. “Suspend viewing them as an agent” is the type of thing I also did, and yes, I could model her somewhat, but I was not really getting things emotionally.
I don’t really view anyone as an agent anymore, some are more agenty than others, and wanting to mostly spend time with agenty people is fair, I don’t think it’s healthy to think about it this way.
Sure some people are cats compared to other people. Some neural nets happened to get better training data than others and have better initializations. Disgust and disbelief towards normal people is really not healthy imo, you shouldn’t have to suppress or suspend anything.
It’s hard to rationally convince someone of this, but you show some signs of missing stuff similar to not seeing colors re emotions. I’m not certain, but I think you’d would derive a ton of value from talking to a good coach/therapist re: empathy, emotions, possibly relationships. Idk if you know David Yu (co runs sparc) but he’s who showed me the way I wasn’t doing real empathy in a way that was intuitively grokked.
You’re an exceptional alignment researcher but regarding relationships and emotional maturity I think you’re highly underinvested & it’s obvious to ppl who’ve invested more into those (such as me, obsessing over relationships and emotional stuff for the last ~6mo after a horrible breakup, a lot of coaching, meditation etc.)
Note: I’m not just indexing off the empathy posts, it’s also “the value proposition of romantic relationships” post, this is something which most people intuitively feel relatively early on and don’t need to derive. Several other signs too, such as not noticing you were depressed, again I’m not certain! But it’s definitely worth exploring for you under uncertainty.
LW generally doesn’t seem to value emotional intelligence and relational maturity very highly relative to intelligence and agency. I was similar, but creating a toxic situation which hurt the person I loved the most in the world totally changed my priorities regarding this. If you reading feel similar, “oh this isn’t that important for me, I’m busy” consider unsong and that your robin could fall by your own deluded immature hands, without you even realizing it’s happening.
John, I think you are still missing something regarding empathy and it would be good for you to be open to that possibility. This post is a nice clarification but it still makes me think you don’t get the thing in the same way I used to not get the thing with my ex. “Suspend viewing them as an agent” is the type of thing I also did, and yes, I could model her somewhat, but I was not really getting things emotionally.
I don’t really view anyone as an agent anymore, some are more agenty than others, and wanting to mostly spend time with agenty people is fair, I don’t think it’s healthy to think about it this way.
Sure some people are cats compared to other people. Some neural nets happened to get better training data than others and have better initializations. Disgust and disbelief towards normal people is really not healthy imo, you shouldn’t have to suppress or suspend anything.
It’s hard to rationally convince someone of this, but you show some signs of missing stuff similar to not seeing colors re emotions. I’m not certain, but I think you’d would derive a ton of value from talking to a good coach/therapist re: empathy, emotions, possibly relationships. Idk if you know David Yu (co runs sparc) but he’s who showed me the way I wasn’t doing real empathy in a way that was intuitively grokked.
You’re an exceptional alignment researcher but regarding relationships and emotional maturity I think you’re highly underinvested & it’s obvious to ppl who’ve invested more into those (such as me, obsessing over relationships and emotional stuff for the last ~6mo after a horrible breakup, a lot of coaching, meditation etc.)
Note: I’m not just indexing off the empathy posts, it’s also “the value proposition of romantic relationships” post, this is something which most people intuitively feel relatively early on and don’t need to derive. Several other signs too, such as not noticing you were depressed, again I’m not certain! But it’s definitely worth exploring for you under uncertainty.
LW generally doesn’t seem to value emotional intelligence and relational maturity very highly relative to intelligence and agency. I was similar, but creating a toxic situation which hurt the person I loved the most in the world totally changed my priorities regarding this. If you reading feel similar, “oh this isn’t that important for me, I’m busy” consider unsong and that your robin could fall by your own deluded immature hands, without you even realizing it’s happening.
I can infer the meaning of this metaphor in context, but I don’t remember any robins in unsong!
Mild spoiler!
The Comet King’s wife’s name was Robin.
Comet King’s wife