Endorse following that link above to simulacra level 1, for anyone following this.
One would think that it would also be powerful (at level 4) to create common knowledge of your *lack* of ability to interact with or help with a thing, which can be assisted by the creation of common knowledge blaming someone else. And in fact I do think we observe a lot of attempts to create common “knowledge” (air quotes because the information in question is often incomplete, misleading or outright false) about who is to blame for various things.
It is also reasonable in some sense, at that point, to put a large multiplier on bad things for which we establish common knowledge if we expect that most bad things do not become common knowledge, to the extent that one might be judged to be as bad as the worst established action.
Which in turn results in anything and anyone under sufficient hostile scrutiny, which has taken a bunch of action, to be seen as bad.
The Copenhagen Interpretation actually is perverse and is quite bad, whether or not it is a locally reasonable action in some cases for people on L-2 or higher.
One of the big advantages, to me, of TCI is that in addition to explaining specific behaviors very well in many cases, it also points out that the people involved can’t be L-1 players, and since most people agree with TCI, most people aren’t L-1.
Of course, it is rather silly to think that no one in the community is making honest mistakes about what deserve praise or blame; in addition to any and all dishonest ‘mistakes’ there are constant important honest ones as well. So hanging on to a pure L-1 perspective has its own problems even with only L-1 players, before a war into L-2.
There’s a ton of hostile action but you don’t need it to generate a lot of the same results anyway at lower magnitudes.
Agree that the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics model is important in large part because it clarifies that most people are not computing a simulacrum level 1 morality. We’re going to need to be better about saying this explicitly, because the default outcome for posts like yours is to get interpreted as claiming that people really are just making an unmotivated technical error. I think that’s what happened with LessWrong, and we both know how that project failed. Tsuyoku Naritai!
I’m actually a bit confused about whether Copenhagen is automatically not Level 1 Simulacrum.
(also, I’m noticing that we’re using multiple layers of jargon here and this whole conversation could use a distillation down into plain English, but for now will stay knee-deep in the jargon)
Whether Copenhagen is perverse depends a bit on how reasonable it is to halfway solve a problem, or how suspicious it is to benefit from solving a problem.
In todays world, problems are immense and complicated and you definitely want people making partial progress on them, and don’t want to incentivize people to ignore problems. But this isn’t obviously true to me among ancient hunter gatherers. (I don’t currently have a clear model of what problems ancient hunter-gatherers actually faced, and how hard they were to fix, and so this isn’t a place where I have a strong opinion much at all, just that the current arguments seem underjustified to me)
I recall when my dad would get mad at me for mowing half the lawn. I’m not sure how to think about this. Obviously mowing half the lawn is better than mowing zero. But, his point was “Actually, it is not that hard to mow the whole god damn lawn. It is virtuous to finish things that you start. You (Ray) seem to be working yourself up into a sense that you’ve worked so hard and should get to stop when you just haven’t actually worked that hard and you could finish the rest of the lawn in another 30 minutes and then the whole thing would be done.”
Whether this is reasonable or not depends on whether you think it’s more important to get laws partially mowed, and whether you think my feeling of exhaustion after mowing half the lawn was legitimate, or a psychological defense mechanism for giving myself an excuse to stop an feel good about myself without having completed the entire job. (I don’t actually know myself)
Endorse following that link above to simulacra level 1, for anyone following this.
One would think that it would also be powerful (at level 4) to create common knowledge of your *lack* of ability to interact with or help with a thing, which can be assisted by the creation of common knowledge blaming someone else. And in fact I do think we observe a lot of attempts to create common “knowledge” (air quotes because the information in question is often incomplete, misleading or outright false) about who is to blame for various things.
It is also reasonable in some sense, at that point, to put a large multiplier on bad things for which we establish common knowledge if we expect that most bad things do not become common knowledge, to the extent that one might be judged to be as bad as the worst established action.
Which in turn results in anything and anyone under sufficient hostile scrutiny, which has taken a bunch of action, to be seen as bad.
The Copenhagen Interpretation actually is perverse and is quite bad, whether or not it is a locally reasonable action in some cases for people on L-2 or higher.
One of the big advantages, to me, of TCI is that in addition to explaining specific behaviors very well in many cases, it also points out that the people involved can’t be L-1 players, and since most people agree with TCI, most people aren’t L-1.
Of course, it is rather silly to think that no one in the community is making honest mistakes about what deserve praise or blame; in addition to any and all dishonest ‘mistakes’ there are constant important honest ones as well. So hanging on to a pure L-1 perspective has its own problems even with only L-1 players, before a war into L-2.
There’s a ton of hostile action but you don’t need it to generate a lot of the same results anyway at lower magnitudes.
Agree that the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics model is important in large part because it clarifies that most people are not computing a simulacrum level 1 morality. We’re going to need to be better about saying this explicitly, because the default outcome for posts like yours is to get interpreted as claiming that people really are just making an unmotivated technical error. I think that’s what happened with LessWrong, and we both know how that project failed. Tsuyoku Naritai!
I’m actually a bit confused about whether Copenhagen is automatically not Level 1 Simulacrum.
(also, I’m noticing that we’re using multiple layers of jargon here and this whole conversation could use a distillation down into plain English, but for now will stay knee-deep in the jargon)
Whether Copenhagen is perverse depends a bit on how reasonable it is to halfway solve a problem, or how suspicious it is to benefit from solving a problem.
In todays world, problems are immense and complicated and you definitely want people making partial progress on them, and don’t want to incentivize people to ignore problems. But this isn’t obviously true to me among ancient hunter gatherers. (I don’t currently have a clear model of what problems ancient hunter-gatherers actually faced, and how hard they were to fix, and so this isn’t a place where I have a strong opinion much at all, just that the current arguments seem underjustified to me)
I recall when my dad would get mad at me for mowing half the lawn. I’m not sure how to think about this. Obviously mowing half the lawn is better than mowing zero. But, his point was “Actually, it is not that hard to mow the whole god damn lawn. It is virtuous to finish things that you start. You (Ray) seem to be working yourself up into a sense that you’ve worked so hard and should get to stop when you just haven’t actually worked that hard and you could finish the rest of the lawn in another 30 minutes and then the whole thing would be done.”
Whether this is reasonable or not depends on whether you think it’s more important to get laws partially mowed, and whether you think my feeling of exhaustion after mowing half the lawn was legitimate, or a psychological defense mechanism for giving myself an excuse to stop an feel good about myself without having completed the entire job. (I don’t actually know myself)
To answer the topline question I think that you can accept Copenhagen and still be on Level 1.
I like the lawn example because in many ways it is clean. There are a number of ways your dad can be right to get mad, and ways he can be wrong.
Or, alternately: I’m not 100% sure what Level 1 Morality is supposed to mean here.