Isn’t having boundaries also partly to do with full on consent (proactive and retroactive) with your implied preferences being unknown?
Consent is tricky because almost no one who isn’t unschooled grows up consenting to anything. People grow used to consenting to things that make them feel unhappy because they don’t know themselves well enough, and they trap themselves into structures that punish you for dropping out or for not opting into anything. In that sense, the system does not respect your own boundaries for your own self autonomy—your actions don’t have the proper markov boundary from the rest of the system and thus you can’t act as an independent agent. Some unschooled people have the most robust markov boundaries. The very structure of many school and work environments (one that penalizes work at home) is one that inherently creates power structures that cross people’s boundaries, especially their energetic ones.
Even the state starts out by eroding some of the boundaries between person and state, without consent..
(Now that AI is creating new wealth very quickly, it becomes more possible for people to default not consent to all the mazes that everyone else seemingly “consents to”). Zvi’s mazes post makes sense here
Thanks for the interesting post! I agree that understanding ourselves better through therapy or personal development it is a great way to gain insights that could be applicable to AI safety. My personal development path got started mostly due to stress from not living up to my unrealistic expectations of how much I “should” have been succeeding as an engineer. It got me focused on self-esteem, and that’s a key feature of the AI safety path I’m pursuing.
I’m quite curious about this. What if you’re stuck on an island with multiple people and limited food?
Where do you think the boundary is here?
Isn’t having boundaries also partly to do with full on consent (proactive and retroactive) with your implied preferences being unknown?
Consent is tricky because almost no one who isn’t unschooled grows up consenting to anything. People grow used to consenting to things that make them feel unhappy because they don’t know themselves well enough, and they trap themselves into structures that punish you for dropping out or for not opting into anything. In that sense, the system does not respect your own boundaries for your own self autonomy—your actions don’t have the proper markov boundary from the rest of the system and thus you can’t act as an independent agent. Some unschooled people have the most robust markov boundaries. The very structure of many school and work environments (one that penalizes work at home) is one that inherently creates power structures that cross people’s boundaries, especially their energetic ones.
Even the state starts out by eroding some of the boundaries between person and state, without consent..
These people have stronger boundaries on ONE layer of abstraction—https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-art-of-not-being-governed?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2. This does not necessarily translate to better boundaries on the object level
https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1766509149297189274?t=ms8cmXL0em2zB4xdJyUblA&s=19 on mimetic boundaries
(Now that AI is creating new wealth very quickly, it becomes more possible for people to default not consent to all the mazes that everyone else seemingly “consents to”). Zvi’s mazes post makes sense here
I’d like to reply to your comment but I didn’t understand your first sentence
Thanks for the interesting post! I agree that understanding ourselves better through therapy or personal development it is a great way to gain insights that could be applicable to AI safety. My personal development path got started mostly due to stress from not living up to my unrealistic expectations of how much I “should” have been succeeding as an engineer. It got me focused on self-esteem, and that’s a key feature of the AI safety path I’m pursuing.
If other AI safety researchers are interested in a relatively easy way to get started on their own path, I suggest this online course which can be purchased for <$20 when on sale: https://www.udemy.com/course/set-yourself-free-from-anger
Good luck on your boundaries work!