A topic that came up last time and I didn’t see a great answer for: where does truth fit in here? Does the idea of rent-paying beliefs have any intersection with this framework?
Wait, really? That’s totally now how I read it. I thought the simulacra levels were divergence between public and private beliefs. People start realizing that the ‘shared map’ is chosen for reasons other than correspondence with territory, and begin to explicitly model the map-sharing processes separate from map-validating ones.
That process is incremental and I think the part you just described (where people “realize the shared map is chosen for reasons other than correspondence”) is what’s going on at level 3-4.
But really, how does this framework work when the level-1 beliefs are false? One example is a church-heavy township where everyone does actually believe their god is real (level 1, private and public beliefs match) and over time people start to question, but not publicly (level 2), then start to find reasons that religion was a useful cohesive belief, without actually believing it (level 3?).
Is there a framework for staying in level 1, but being less wrong, or including other’s beliefs in your level-1 model without getting stuck in higher levels where you forget that there IS a truth?
The intent of level-1, as I understand it, is you just say “this seems false?” and they say “why?” and you say “because X”, and that either works or doesn’t because of object level beliefs about the world. (i.e. people at level 1 have an understanding of having been mistaken)
I think I’m still confused, or maybe stuck at a low (or maybe high! unsure how to use this...) level. I do my best for my private maps and models to be predictive of future experiences. I have no expectation that I can communicate these private beliefs very well to most of humanity. I am quite willing to understand other individuals’ and groups’ statements of belief as a mix of signaling, social cohesion, manipulation, and true beliefs. I participate in communication acts for all of these purposes as well.
Does this mean I’m simultaneously at different levels for different purposes?
Does this mean I’m simultaneously at different levels for different purposes?
There’s an important difference between:
(1) Participating in fictions or pseudorepresentative communication (i.e. bullshit) while being explicitly aware of it (at least potentially, like if someone asked you whether it meant anything you’d give an unconfused answer). This is a sort of reflective, rational-postmodernist level 1.
(2) Adjusting your story for nonepistemic reasons but feeling compelled to rationalize them in a consistent way, which makes your nonepistemic narratives sticky, and contaminates your models of what’s going on. This is what Rao calls clueless in The Gervais Principle.
(3) Acting from a fundamentally social metaphysics like a level 3⁄4 player, willing to generate sophisticated “logical” rationales where convenient, but not constraining your actions based on your story. This is what cluster thinking cashes out as, as far as I can tell.
Hmm. I still suspect I’m more fluid than is implied in these models. I think I’m mostly a mix of cluster thinking (I recognize multiple conflicting models, and shift my weights between them for private beliefs, while using a different set of weights for public beliefs (because shifting others’ beliefs is relative to my model of their current position, not absolute prediction levels—Aumann doesn’t apply to humans)), and I do recognize that I will experience only one future, which I call “objective”, and that’s pretty much rational-postmodernist level 1. I watch for #2, but I’m sure I’m sometimes susceptible (stupid biological computing substrate!).
But in another sense someone who takes level 1 as subject has whole swathes of the territory that they can’t see, namely all the people who are operating at levels 2,3,4.
Someone at level 1 is going to take longer to learn how to get along in a level 3 or 4 environment than a level 3 or 4 player, but is capable of knowing about them, while people who are level 3⁄4 players at core can’t really know about anything. They can acquire know-how by doing, but not know-about, insofar as their language is nonepistemic.
I don’t think that squares with the subject/object interpretation you’re offering here though. If I can take level one as object, I can use and manipulate and know in all the ways that someone who is subject to it can.
It seems to me that one can take each level as subject or object, without necessarily having taken the previously level as subject/object. That might mean that the “stages of subject/object shifts” you’re pointing at here is less useful.
I know people who can’t really grok other people playing in social realms, but are really good at sensemaking with other people who can take level one as object.
I also know people can play social games a bunch, but are bad at object level knowing.
I also know people who understand level 4 game playing through a level one lens, viewing at as another aspect of the territory.
And I know people who understand level 1 lens, but basically use it to manipulate level 4 social reality to get their way, rather than seeing at as the thing that’s important in its’ own right.
Another way of exploring my confusion: can you give an example where this model was more predictive or made better recommendations than a simpler “public communication is an idiosyncratic mix of correct beliefs, incorrect beliefs, intentional signaling and unintentional signaling” explanation?
A topic that came up last time and I didn’t see a great answer for: where does truth fit in here? Does the idea of rent-paying beliefs have any intersection with this framework?
Level 1, objectivity, is trying to describe the territory accurately.
Wait, really? That’s totally now how I read it. I thought the simulacra levels were divergence between public and private beliefs. People start realizing that the ‘shared map’ is chosen for reasons other than correspondence with territory, and begin to explicitly model the map-sharing processes separate from map-validating ones.
That process is incremental and I think the part you just described (where people “realize the shared map is chosen for reasons other than correspondence”) is what’s going on at level 3-4.
But really, how does this framework work when the level-1 beliefs are false? One example is a church-heavy township where everyone does actually believe their god is real (level 1, private and public beliefs match) and over time people start to question, but not publicly (level 2), then start to find reasons that religion was a useful cohesive belief, without actually believing it (level 3?).
Is there a framework for staying in level 1, but being less wrong, or including other’s beliefs in your level-1 model without getting stuck in higher levels where you forget that there IS a truth?
The intent of level-1, as I understand it, is you just say “this seems false?” and they say “why?” and you say “because X”, and that either works or doesn’t because of object level beliefs about the world. (i.e. people at level 1 have an understanding of having been mistaken)
I think I’m still confused, or maybe stuck at a low (or maybe high! unsure how to use this...) level. I do my best for my private maps and models to be predictive of future experiences. I have no expectation that I can communicate these private beliefs very well to most of humanity. I am quite willing to understand other individuals’ and groups’ statements of belief as a mix of signaling, social cohesion, manipulation, and true beliefs. I participate in communication acts for all of these purposes as well.
Does this mean I’m simultaneously at different levels for different purposes?
There’s an important difference between:
(1) Participating in fictions or pseudorepresentative communication (i.e. bullshit) while being explicitly aware of it (at least potentially, like if someone asked you whether it meant anything you’d give an unconfused answer). This is a sort of reflective, rational-postmodernist level 1.
(2) Adjusting your story for nonepistemic reasons but feeling compelled to rationalize them in a consistent way, which makes your nonepistemic narratives sticky, and contaminates your models of what’s going on. This is what Rao calls clueless in The Gervais Principle.
(3) Acting from a fundamentally social metaphysics like a level 3⁄4 player, willing to generate sophisticated “logical” rationales where convenient, but not constraining your actions based on your story. This is what cluster thinking cashes out as, as far as I can tell.
Hmm. I still suspect I’m more fluid than is implied in these models. I think I’m mostly a mix of cluster thinking (I recognize multiple conflicting models, and shift my weights between them for private beliefs, while using a different set of weights for public beliefs (because shifting others’ beliefs is relative to my model of their current position, not absolute prediction levels—Aumann doesn’t apply to humans)), and I do recognize that I will experience only one future, which I call “objective”, and that’s pretty much rational-postmodernist level 1. I watch for #2, but I’m sure I’m sometimes susceptible (stupid biological computing substrate!).
But in another sense someone who takes level 1 as subject has whole swathes of the territory that they can’t see, namely all the people who are operating at levels 2,3,4.
Someone at level 1 is going to take longer to learn how to get along in a level 3 or 4 environment than a level 3 or 4 player, but is capable of knowing about them, while people who are level 3⁄4 players at core can’t really know about anything. They can acquire know-how by doing, but not know-about, insofar as their language is nonepistemic.
I don’t think that squares with the subject/object interpretation you’re offering here though. If I can take level one as object, I can use and manipulate and know in all the ways that someone who is subject to it can.
It seems to me that one can take each level as subject or object, without necessarily having taken the previously level as subject/object. That might mean that the “stages of subject/object shifts” you’re pointing at here is less useful.
I know people who can’t really grok other people playing in social realms, but are really good at sensemaking with other people who can take level one as object.
I also know people can play social games a bunch, but are bad at object level knowing.
I also know people who understand level 4 game playing through a level one lens, viewing at as another aspect of the territory.
And I know people who understand level 1 lens, but basically use it to manipulate level 4 social reality to get their way, rather than seeing at as the thing that’s important in its’ own right.
So a stab at a model that can handle more complexity might be two factors of:
What levels you can take as object.
What levels do you most frequently use as your primary sensemaking apparatus.
Another way of exploring my confusion: can you give an example where this model was more predictive or made better recommendations than a simpler “public communication is an idiosyncratic mix of correct beliefs, incorrect beliefs, intentional signaling and unintentional signaling” explanation?