I lived with Olivia for a few months in 2024, and it was definitely somewhat mentally destabilizing. My personal feelings about her are of course somewhat complicated, but certainly I think it should be common knowledge that like, taking her perspective on things super seriously for months is a pretty bad idea, and also that she will just be kind of an asshole in many situations.
I do think people (including herself) playing Olivia up as some sort of super dangerous cult leadery person did not help me. Other people’s mileage may vary, but I think discussing these things in as grounded a way as possible would at least have been important for helping my mental health. So I tend to emphasize like, the abrasiveness and stuff over, like, the reality distortion field stuff. “This person is really dangerous because they’re good with reality distortion fields” is the sort of attitude that will get even the things which were legitimately like totally inane jokes or whatever to lodge themselves in your head and drive you crazy.
(Not to say that you should deny persuasiveness / whatever as phenomena, but like, I dunno, prefer mundane frames for thinking about them and try to stay calm and grounded about it.)
I think reality distortion fields are a mundane phenomena, if maybe a bit mystically named. I came across them in a Steve Jobs biography, and I think they describe many business leaders succesfully. It’s the property of being able to make people believe things they didn’t before, with force of charisma.
I don’t disagree that maybe we should coin a more mundane frame. I wouldn’t call it the same persusasiveness that someone selling a car applies on you, though.
I think its really important to undesrtand the various ways agents can distort the field of social reality. Social reality is actually the main reality we live in most of the time, and so understanding how it works is super important. Sometimes it’s logic is a bit more paradoxical than physics, but this doesn’t mean it’s entirely illogical or unreasonable. “Reality distortion field” is a great term as long as we understand that the reality being distorted is the social one.
Recently, I started walking and training my friend’s dog. Oftentimes people have a hard time getting this dog to cooperate, especially around letting the human pick the route. He tends to try to pull you where he wants to go (usually towards tasty, tasty garbage.) I have very successfully taught this dog to heel for me.
A significant part of doing this is realizing that my expectations are actually a causative factor in the dog’s behavior. If I expect the dog not to follow me, the dog will in fact not follow me. If the dog is pulling, I need to accept that reality in the moment while still maintaining just as much, or even increasing, my expectation of the desired behavior in the future.
Reality distortion fields happen when someone is unusually good at maintaining expectation in this way, and uses it for unethical or anti-epistemic purposes. People ethically using this skill are more capable of resisting reality distortion fields and creating structures that enable healthy coordination.
The persuasions of the witch’s craft Is the craft of the witch’s persuasions
I wonder whether these people are actually good at doing the “reality distortion”, or just good at finding the right kind of victims.
That would also explain the “over-the-top evil” as a tool for filtering easy victims, kinda like the typos in Nigerian prince’s e-mails.
I imagine that Vassar approaches you and says: “I am a dark wizard with mysterious mind manipulation powers”. (Except more socially gracefully.) If you look at him skeptically and say “what?”, he will just mumble some random advice and walk away. But if your eyes widen and you say with a trembling voice “please, sir wizard, don’t hurt me”, he will take you aside and tell you some paranoid conspiracy theory and advise you to start taking drugs.
I lived with Olivia for a few months in 2024, and it was definitely somewhat mentally destabilizing. My personal feelings about her are of course somewhat complicated, but certainly I think it should be common knowledge that like, taking her perspective on things super seriously for months is a pretty bad idea, and also that she will just be kind of an asshole in many situations.
I do think people (including herself) playing Olivia up as some sort of super dangerous cult leadery person did not help me. Other people’s mileage may vary, but I think discussing these things in as grounded a way as possible would at least have been important for helping my mental health. So I tend to emphasize like, the abrasiveness and stuff over, like, the reality distortion field stuff. “This person is really dangerous because they’re good with reality distortion fields” is the sort of attitude that will get even the things which were legitimately like totally inane jokes or whatever to lodge themselves in your head and drive you crazy.
(Not to say that you should deny persuasiveness / whatever as phenomena, but like, I dunno, prefer mundane frames for thinking about them and try to stay calm and grounded about it.)
I think reality distortion fields are a mundane phenomena, if maybe a bit mystically named. I came across them in a Steve Jobs biography, and I think they describe many business leaders succesfully. It’s the property of being able to make people believe things they didn’t before, with force of charisma.
I don’t disagree that maybe we should coin a more mundane frame. I wouldn’t call it the same persusasiveness that someone selling a car applies on you, though.
I think its really important to undesrtand the various ways agents can distort the field of social reality. Social reality is actually the main reality we live in most of the time, and so understanding how it works is super important. Sometimes it’s logic is a bit more paradoxical than physics, but this doesn’t mean it’s entirely illogical or unreasonable. “Reality distortion field” is a great term as long as we understand that the reality being distorted is the social one.
Recently, I started walking and training my friend’s dog. Oftentimes people have a hard time getting this dog to cooperate, especially around letting the human pick the route. He tends to try to pull you where he wants to go (usually towards tasty, tasty garbage.) I have very successfully taught this dog to heel for me.
A significant part of doing this is realizing that my expectations are actually a causative factor in the dog’s behavior. If I expect the dog not to follow me, the dog will in fact not follow me. If the dog is pulling, I need to accept that reality in the moment while still maintaining just as much, or even increasing, my expectation of the desired behavior in the future.
Reality distortion fields happen when someone is unusually good at maintaining expectation in this way, and uses it for unethical or anti-epistemic purposes. People ethically using this skill are more capable of resisting reality distortion fields and creating structures that enable healthy coordination.
The persuasions of the witch’s craft
Is the craft of the witch’s persuasions
I agree they’re basically mundane—but I think that can be difficult to see when inside one, and the name certainly doesn’t help.
I wonder whether these people are actually good at doing the “reality distortion”, or just good at finding the right kind of victims.
That would also explain the “over-the-top evil” as a tool for filtering easy victims, kinda like the typos in Nigerian prince’s e-mails.
I imagine that Vassar approaches you and says: “I am a dark wizard with mysterious mind manipulation powers”. (Except more socially gracefully.) If you look at him skeptically and say “what?”, he will just mumble some random advice and walk away. But if your eyes widen and you say with a trembling voice “please, sir wizard, don’t hurt me”, he will take you aside and tell you some paranoid conspiracy theory and advise you to start taking drugs.