Glad to hear it! I’m curious as to why? Also, can you imagine any extensions or developments that might come from this idea? I’m willing to take any feedback I can, because I’m worried about building a world-model in isolation.
I’ve personally gotten a lot out of viewing myself as a 4D worm (a 3-Dimensional being stretched out across the fourth dimension of Time can be thought of as a sort of 4D worm), when I remember to do so.
A concrete benefit is that it renders procrastination moot—the task, if completed at all, is in the worm somewhere, so the specific location in time it finds itself is not particularly important. Which means it might as well be now.
There’s also an emotional component—if I think of myself as some kind of weighted average of myself in the moment, I can be destabilized by emotion or trauma or just life throwing crap at me. If I think of myself as the average of the entire 4D worm, on the other hand, that’s far harder to destabilize.
Your conception of every day being a microcosm of one’s life is another way of looking at the same concept, where individual slices of the worm can be thought of as basically an MRI image of the life in question. Brushing one’s teeth in each slice equates to healthy teeth for the entirety of the worm, and so on. Since we live in the individual slices, this is useful to think about, as we’re really trying to shape the entire worm.
I like this idea. I’ve personally been viewing time as a pile of sheets of paper packed up in a cube, with each sheet representing one Planck time/ brain cycle/whatever. (The MRI image is an excellent analogy.) I’ve also been imagining all my final achievements in one place which I can see at any moment, and then fulfill a part of on any given day, much like your “worm” in which you store everything you are going to do. Stepping outside time is surprisingly useful.
For me things get odd when you start applying anthropic reasoning and it becomes apparent that only the present exists and you are a single sheet of the MRI scan. That’s when I would integrate the idea of acausal trade; “if I make these sacrifices today, I increase the chance that a future self will do it, and since I am, myself, a future self… ”. This helps materialize the final sum of all your life, the “worm” in your case. Still grappling with procrastination though, even though I’m trying to defect as little as possible in relation to future and counterfactual selves.
It’s interesting because I haven’t seen this particular brand of idea much, even though it seems like an obviously useful and fairly convergent solution to some daily problems. I’ll collect testimonies like yours and try writing up a post agglomerating it all in order to verbalize this seemingly convergent style of thinking (at least on this site). Might be summarized as something like “game theory in self-help”.
And you have kabbalistically reminded me to start reading Worm.
[Update!] I have now finished Worm. I’m kind of just really relieved that my ambient thought is no longer obsessed by finding new ways to munchkin superpowers. I’m free!
Given that Ward is even longer than Worm, I’m going to wait a while until I fall back into obsession.
I’m doomed already. I’ve narrowly escaped a close encounter after reading a few chapters from at least one of them. I may be cornered, however, but I shan’t admit defeat. I’ve used a site blocker (haha!). This is what an actually pessimistic containment strategy looks like. Check for the time being, minions of wildbow!
Of all of these, I found 8 most useful.
Glad to hear it! I’m curious as to why? Also, can you imagine any extensions or developments that might come from this idea? I’m willing to take any feedback I can, because I’m worried about building a world-model in isolation.
I’ve personally gotten a lot out of viewing myself as a 4D worm (a 3-Dimensional being stretched out across the fourth dimension of Time can be thought of as a sort of 4D worm), when I remember to do so.
A concrete benefit is that it renders procrastination moot—the task, if completed at all, is in the worm somewhere, so the specific location in time it finds itself is not particularly important. Which means it might as well be now.
There’s also an emotional component—if I think of myself as some kind of weighted average of myself in the moment, I can be destabilized by emotion or trauma or just life throwing crap at me. If I think of myself as the average of the entire 4D worm, on the other hand, that’s far harder to destabilize.
Your conception of every day being a microcosm of one’s life is another way of looking at the same concept, where individual slices of the worm can be thought of as basically an MRI image of the life in question. Brushing one’s teeth in each slice equates to healthy teeth for the entirety of the worm, and so on. Since we live in the individual slices, this is useful to think about, as we’re really trying to shape the entire worm.
I like this idea. I’ve personally been viewing time as a pile of sheets of paper packed up in a cube, with each sheet representing one Planck time/ brain cycle/whatever. (The MRI image is an excellent analogy.) I’ve also been imagining all my final achievements in one place which I can see at any moment, and then fulfill a part of on any given day, much like your “worm” in which you store everything you are going to do. Stepping outside time is surprisingly useful.
For me things get odd when you start applying anthropic reasoning and it becomes apparent that only the present exists and you are a single sheet of the MRI scan. That’s when I would integrate the idea of acausal trade; “if I make these sacrifices today, I increase the chance that a future self will do it, and since I am, myself, a future self… ”. This helps materialize the final sum of all your life, the “worm” in your case. Still grappling with procrastination though, even though I’m trying to defect as little as possible in relation to future and counterfactual selves.
It’s interesting because I haven’t seen this particular brand of idea much, even though it seems like an obviously useful and fairly convergent solution to some daily problems. I’ll collect testimonies like yours and try writing up a post agglomerating it all in order to verbalize this seemingly convergent style of thinking (at least on this site). Might be summarized as something like “game theory in self-help”.
And you have kabbalistically reminded me to start reading Worm.
My master plan has suceeded!
[Update!] I have now finished Worm. I’m kind of just really relieved that my ambient thought is no longer obsessed by finding new ways to munchkin superpowers. I’m free!
Given that Ward is even longer than Worm, I’m going to wait a while until I fall back into obsession.
Wait until you discover the world of Worm fanfiction (*cue evil laughter*).
I’m doomed already. I’ve narrowly escaped a close encounter after reading a few chapters from at least one of them. I may be cornered, however, but I shan’t admit defeat. I’ve used a site blocker (haha!). This is what an actually pessimistic containment strategy looks like. Check for the time being, minions of wildbow!