I read this as being premised on “going crazy about the world ending” meaning that you end up acting obviously stupid and crazy, with the response basically being “find a way to not do that”.
My model about going crazy at the end of the world isn’t so much doing something that’s obviously crazy in your own view, but that the world ending is so out-of-distribution for everything you’ve been doing so far that you have no idea of what even is a sane or rational response anymore. For instance, if your basic sense of meaning has been anchored to a sense of the world persisting after you and you making some kind of mark on the world, you won’t know what to do with your life if there won’t be anything to make a mark on.
So staying sane requires also knowing what to do, not just knowing what not to do. Is there anything you would say about that?
The point is that “maintaining sanity” is a (much) higher bar than “Don’t flail around like a drama queen”. Maintaining sanity requires you to actually update on the situation you find yourself in, and continue to behave in ways that make sense given the reality as it looks after having updated on all the information available. Not matching obvious tropes of people losing their mind is a start, but it is no safe defense. Especially since not all repeated/noticeable failure modes are active and dramatic, and not all show up in fiction.
For example, if there’s something to David Gross’s comment that the wretched journalist was actually giving you an opening because they saw importance in what you had to say about the situation, blowing off a genuine opening to influence the discourse on AI safety while calling it “doing nothing” would not be sane. Preemptive contempt has a purpose in bounded rationality, but it’s still a form of pushing away from the information the journalist has to offer. It can make sense within a grand plan that weights this journalist low, but that requires a grand plan.
How do you actually orient to the world, now that we are what we are? Are you still working to bring about the good outcome? If so, what’s the grand plan that ties everything together? Sharing that seems important for helping people retain sanity. Have you given up? If so, what is the overarching plan that drives how you choose to interact with the world? Because you still have to decide what to do with your time.
This is a hell of a problem to orient to, and I don’t know that any of us get to say we’re doing it sanely. It’s a high bar to strive towards.
The trope that this post and comment match to me isn’t one that shows up in science fiction. It’s a real bitch to wrestle free from, because the whole premise has to do with protecting stability of sense making by pushing away from challenging updates with avoidance and contempt, and the whole project fails if it doesn’t turn meta and resist awareness of the trope. I notice that even writing and rewriting this comment to be minimally threatening of stability without holding back content, it’s going to be a tough one to engage with to the extent that there isn’t a preexisting superstructure regulating contact with reality to maintain stability while minimizing the cost of missed updates.
Which is certainly a possibility. As is leveraging the skill of becoming genre savvy as new patterns emerge (“trope dodging”).
So if this contempt provokes contempt quickly, I’m sorry. My best isn’t always good enough, which is kinda the possibility we’re all wrestling with here.
I agree with this in a “catgirl volcano utopia” kinda way, but I think Kaj_Sotala was pointing more to a “words as pointers to locations in thingspace” issue. The word “sane” points to taking actions that work in the context you’re facing. It isn’t sane to shout about the sky falling when the sky isn’t falling and it’s easy for sane people to notice that the sky isn’t falling and that shouting about it is insane. But there isn’t an obvious plan for what you should do when the sky really is falling, so if the sky starts falling in ways that are obvious and difficult for normal people to ignore, then the thingspace cluster that “sane” used to point to starts to come apart.
I like expanding “sane” to something like “know what’s true and do what works”… it’s an impossible standard but something to aspire to.
It seems “sane” may also point to “not indulging in dramatic emotional expressions”, like not screaming, not crying, not punching inanimate objects. But pathos works. Emotions make characters in stories relatable. So the goal isn’t to stay sane, for that is not a well defined thing to do. The goal isn’t even to look sane, for looking insane may be compelling, and looking sane to everyone all the time is probably impossible. For people in general… “don’t think about what’s sane, think about what works” is probably good advice to gesture towards the actual goal.
In addition to the option of spending effort on reducing the chance the world ends, one could also reframe from “leaving a mark on the world that outlives you” to “contributing to something bigger and beyond yourself.” The world is bigger than you, more important than you and exists outside of you right now, as well as up until the world ends (if/when it does).
Helping the world right now, and helping the world after you are gone, are morally equivalent, and quite possibly equivalent at the level of fundamental physics. I’m not sure what, other than a false sense of personal immortality (legacy as something beyond the actual beneficial effects on the world), is tied to benefiting the world later than your own time of existence. But perhaps that’s my own ignorance.
Re: “For instance, if your basic sense of meaning has been anchored to a sense of the world persisting after you and you making some kind of mark on the world, you won’t know what to do with your life if there won’t be anything to make a mark on.”
Presumably the thing to do then is to devote x% of your effort to saving the world.
I read this as being premised on “going crazy about the world ending” meaning that you end up acting obviously stupid and crazy, with the response basically being “find a way to not do that”.
My model about going crazy at the end of the world isn’t so much doing something that’s obviously crazy in your own view, but that the world ending is so out-of-distribution for everything you’ve been doing so far that you have no idea of what even is a sane or rational response anymore. For instance, if your basic sense of meaning has been anchored to a sense of the world persisting after you and you making some kind of mark on the world, you won’t know what to do with your life if there won’t be anything to make a mark on.
So staying sane requires also knowing what to do, not just knowing what not to do. Is there anything you would say about that?
Base plan: Stay still, die quietly.
There, you now have a better plan than going crazy! If you think up an even better plan you can substitute that one. Meliorization!
The point is that “maintaining sanity” is a (much) higher bar than “Don’t flail around like a drama queen”. Maintaining sanity requires you to actually update on the situation you find yourself in, and continue to behave in ways that make sense given the reality as it looks after having updated on all the information available. Not matching obvious tropes of people losing their mind is a start, but it is no safe defense. Especially since not all repeated/noticeable failure modes are active and dramatic, and not all show up in fiction.
For example, if there’s something to David Gross’s comment that the wretched journalist was actually giving you an opening because they saw importance in what you had to say about the situation, blowing off a genuine opening to influence the discourse on AI safety while calling it “doing nothing” would not be sane. Preemptive contempt has a purpose in bounded rationality, but it’s still a form of pushing away from the information the journalist has to offer. It can make sense within a grand plan that weights this journalist low, but that requires a grand plan.
How do you actually orient to the world, now that we are what we are? Are you still working to bring about the good outcome? If so, what’s the grand plan that ties everything together? Sharing that seems important for helping people retain sanity. Have you given up? If so, what is the overarching plan that drives how you choose to interact with the world? Because you still have to decide what to do with your time.
This is a hell of a problem to orient to, and I don’t know that any of us get to say we’re doing it sanely. It’s a high bar to strive towards.
The trope that this post and comment match to me isn’t one that shows up in science fiction. It’s a real bitch to wrestle free from, because the whole premise has to do with protecting stability of sense making by pushing away from challenging updates with avoidance and contempt, and the whole project fails if it doesn’t turn meta and resist awareness of the trope. I notice that even writing and rewriting this comment to be minimally threatening of stability without holding back content, it’s going to be a tough one to engage with to the extent that there isn’t a preexisting superstructure regulating contact with reality to maintain stability while minimizing the cost of missed updates.
Which is certainly a possibility. As is leveraging the skill of becoming genre savvy as new patterns emerge (“trope dodging”).
So if this contempt provokes contempt quickly, I’m sorry. My best isn’t always good enough, which is kinda the possibility we’re all wrestling with here.
I agree with this in a “catgirl volcano utopia” kinda way, but I think Kaj_Sotala was pointing more to a “words as pointers to locations in thingspace” issue. The word “sane” points to taking actions that work in the context you’re facing. It isn’t sane to shout about the sky falling when the sky isn’t falling and it’s easy for sane people to notice that the sky isn’t falling and that shouting about it is insane. But there isn’t an obvious plan for what you should do when the sky really is falling, so if the sky starts falling in ways that are obvious and difficult for normal people to ignore, then the thingspace cluster that “sane” used to point to starts to come apart.
I like expanding “sane” to something like “know what’s true and do what works”… it’s an impossible standard but something to aspire to.
It seems “sane” may also point to “not indulging in dramatic emotional expressions”, like not screaming, not crying, not punching inanimate objects. But pathos works. Emotions make characters in stories relatable. So the goal isn’t to stay sane, for that is not a well defined thing to do. The goal isn’t even to look sane, for looking insane may be compelling, and looking sane to everyone all the time is probably impossible. For people in general… “don’t think about what’s sane, think about what works” is probably good advice to gesture towards the actual goal.
In addition to the option of spending effort on reducing the chance the world ends, one could also reframe from “leaving a mark on the world that outlives you” to “contributing to something bigger and beyond yourself.” The world is bigger than you, more important than you and exists outside of you right now, as well as up until the world ends (if/when it does).
Helping the world right now, and helping the world after you are gone, are morally equivalent, and quite possibly equivalent at the level of fundamental physics. I’m not sure what, other than a false sense of personal immortality (legacy as something beyond the actual beneficial effects on the world), is tied to benefiting the world later than your own time of existence. But perhaps that’s my own ignorance.
Re: “For instance, if your basic sense of meaning has been anchored to a sense of the world persisting after you and you making some kind of mark on the world, you won’t know what to do with your life if there won’t be anything to make a mark on.”
Presumably the thing to do then is to devote x% of your effort to saving the world.