I think it’s worth sharing here some details about SquirrelInHell’s suicide, specifically to point out to new people that Cognitive Tuning was not what killed SquirrelInHell.
This comment is from Slimepriestess, who is a friendly former-Zizian. I wouldn’t necessarily trust 100% of everything said by a former Zizian (and who should definitely not be treated as a pariah). But it’s pretty well known that SquirrelInHell was doing a ton of over-the-top shit at once (e.g. simultaneously attempting to use dolphin-like sleep deprivation to turn half of their brain into Lawful Evil and the other half into Transgender Good), and was simultaneously hanging around a bunch of violent and dangerous people, and they were all doing hardcore Roko’s Basilisk research.
imo, Maia was trans and the components of her mind (the alter(s) they debucketed into “Shine”) saw the body was physically male and decided that the decision-theoretically correct thing to do was to basically ignore being trans in favor of maximizing influence to save the world. Choosing to transition was pitted against being trans because of the cultural oppression against queers. I’ve run into this attitude among rationalist queers numerous times independently from Ziz and “I can’t transition that will stop me from being a good EA” seems troubling common sentiment.
Prior to getting involved with Ziz, the “Shine” half of her personality had basically been running her system on an adversarial ‘we must act or else’ fear response loop around saving the multiverse from evil using timeless decision theory in order to brute force the subjunctive evolution of the multiverse.
So Ziz and Squirrel’s start interacting, and at that point the “Maia” parts of her had basically been like, traumatized into submission and dissociation, and Ziz intentionally stirs up all those dissociated pieces and draws the realization that Maia is trans to the surface. This caused a spiraling optimization priority conflict between two factions that ziz had empowered the contradictory validity of by helping them reify themselves and define the terms of their conflict in her zero sum black and white good and evil framework.
But Maia didn’t kill them, Shine killed them. I have multiple references that corroborate that. The “beat Maia into submission and then save the world” protocol that they using cooked out all this low level suicidality and “i need to escape, please where is the exit how do i decision-theoretically justify quitting the game?” type feelings of hopelessness and entrapment. The only “exit” that could get them out of their sense of horrifying heroic responsibility was by dying so Shine found a “decision theoretic justification” to kill them and did. “Squirrel’s doom” isn’t just “interhemispheric conflict” if anything it’s much more specific, it’s the specific interaction of:
“i must act or the world will burn. There is no room for anything less than full optimization pressure and utilitarian consequentialism”
vs
“i am a creature that exists in a body. I have needs and desires and want to be happy and feel safe”
This is a very common EA brainworm to have and I know lots of EAs who have folded themselves into pretzels around this sort of internal friction. Ziz didn’t create Squirrel’s internal conflict she just encouraged the “good” Shine half to adversarially bully the evil “Maia” half more and more, escalating the conflict to lethality.
Generally, I think people should be deferring to Raemon on the question of “is Cognitive Tuning safe?” and should, at minimum, message him to get his side of the story. This situation is a really big deal; if Cognitive Tuning works, that’s successful human intelligence augmentation, that is world-saving shit. Cognitive Tuning alone could become an entire field of intelligence augmentation, AND something that anyone with average intelligence can contribute heavily towards, since having a more typical mind will yield more insights that can be picked up and worked with by other people with more typical minds).
I think it’s worth sharing here some details about SquirrelInHell’s suicide, specifically to point out to new people that Cognitive Tuning was not what killed SquirrelInHell.
This comment is from Slimepriestess, who is a friendly former-Zizian. I wouldn’t necessarily trust 100% of everything said by a former Zizian (and who should definitely not be treated as a pariah). But it’s pretty well known that SquirrelInHell was doing a ton of over-the-top shit at once (e.g. simultaneously attempting to use dolphin-like sleep deprivation to turn half of their brain into Lawful Evil and the other half into Transgender Good), and was simultaneously hanging around a bunch of violent and dangerous people, and they were all doing hardcore Roko’s Basilisk research.
Generally, I think people should be deferring to Raemon on the question of “is Cognitive Tuning safe?” and should, at minimum, message him to get his side of the story. This situation is a really big deal; if Cognitive Tuning works, that’s successful human intelligence augmentation, that is world-saving shit. Cognitive Tuning alone could become an entire field of intelligence augmentation, AND something that anyone with average intelligence can contribute heavily towards, since having a more typical mind will yield more insights that can be picked up and worked with by other people with more typical minds).