Thanks for taking the time to write this! I generally like it. I have a lot of notes, because I think there’s a better version of this that I’d really like.
As it stands, I think this post relies too much on ‘feel-good’ or agreed-upon Lesswrong beliefs, and isn’t super useful.
General:
This would benefit from being 30-50% shorter. There are a fair amount of tangents that should be their own conversation/argument, which makes me hesitant to implicitly cosign this by sharing it. I would send it to people if it had less rambles.
It seems like the “Eldritch Deity” framing is being used in two ways in this article, implicitly:
Embodying the complex levers & actions (the natural world, current systems e.g. global markets)
A mask used by humans to explain away instances of #1 without actually interacting with them (gods, phrases like “the economy”)
It would be good to explicitly clear these up as two different concepts, or at least have different pointers for when one is being talked about.
Modern magic
Shorten:
Get rid of harping about intellectual superiority—this seems obvious/ is not the place to make this point.
Shorten culture tangent
Powerlessness
Shorten the beginning. It feels self-evident that not knowing things makes us powerless. The point I get from this is “Not knowing makes us powerless which is where the tragedy/horror comes from”
Thievery section should be shortened—cut down on vigilante tangent to something more like <there’s no recourse—acting in this way is vigilantism—maybe for good reason—but it’s frustrating to not have recourse>
In the “Possible to get unstuck” section, the quoted paragraph “designing laws mandating stronger sentences”—is one sided & stronger than I think it has a right to be (argues for a specific solution when the point is supposed to be specific solutions are hard)
Escapism & Fantasy:
The general premise here that <people try and frame things as a story> is talked about a lot. I wouldn’t reiterate this. I think it is worth emphasizing the link between this and powerlessness.
I don’t think that “(elon musk) got trump elected” is undisputedly true.
I generally don’t like this elon musk story—the lesson seems to be “even billionaires can (say they will) try to solve a problem (government inefficiency) and fail—no one knows how to make things work!”
But it seems likely this is just a case of <Elon specifically> being unable to solve something, and overestimate how complex/thorny things are. Presumably Bill Gates is having more impact on the things he wants to impact?
The story seems to say to me “trying to do things really quickly & surface level against these entities doesn’t work”. Which seems reasonable, but maybe is different than what it’s framed as?
Panicking:
This section restates the previous section!
The first point of Escapism & Fantasy—that people look for bad guys. This is redone w/ more bad guys.
Then the second point from E&F (that individual people grab for power)
I would combine the Dominic example with the one from E&F. Maybe move both of those to this section.
The interesting part of this section doesn’t get enough time:
“Very few people are trying to reclaim power in a useful way .. ” I would expand on the examples listed, and explore this idea more.
Core Paradox:
The first part of this is fine. A good recap. I don’t like the high-level explanation.
I don’t see how cultural tradition or communal values (I assume this is what’s being pointed at here with “Traditional Eldritch Deities”) would help with the current deities of e.g. the economy.
Again I think this suffers from overloading of the phrase “Eldritch Deities”, and if this was cleared up maybe there’s a better point here.
Conclusion:
I like Progress & Agency. I like the call to change this.
I would like more discussion of what this looks like—similar to how I think the most interesting part of panicking was people actually trying to tackle the problem brought up in this post.
General Nitpicks
“Woke, wokeism”—unless I’m very off-base these have never seemed like ‘real’ terms to me. They’re woefully overdefined & reading them just makes me cringe.
The ability to which we understand certain things, e.g. human biology, seems overstated. Yes, we know many mechanisms we didn’t use to know & it seems like many things are an engineering problem, but like the body is just so complex—in the same way that modern Eldritch Deities are, even!
Thanks for taking the time to write this! I generally like it. I have a lot of notes, because I think there’s a better version of this that I’d really like.
As it stands, I think this post relies too much on ‘feel-good’ or agreed-upon Lesswrong beliefs, and isn’t super useful.
General:
This would benefit from being 30-50% shorter. There are a fair amount of tangents that should be their own conversation/argument, which makes me hesitant to implicitly cosign this by sharing it. I would send it to people if it had less rambles.
It seems like the “Eldritch Deity” framing is being used in two ways in this article, implicitly:
Embodying the complex levers & actions (the natural world, current systems e.g. global markets)
A mask used by humans to explain away instances of #1 without actually interacting with them (gods, phrases like “the economy”) It would be good to explicitly clear these up as two different concepts, or at least have different pointers for when one is being talked about.
Modern magic
Shorten:
Get rid of harping about intellectual superiority—this seems obvious/ is not the place to make this point.
Shorten culture tangent
Powerlessness
Shorten the beginning. It feels self-evident that not knowing things makes us powerless. The point I get from this is “Not knowing makes us powerless which is where the tragedy/horror comes from”
Thievery section should be shortened—cut down on vigilante tangent to something more like <there’s no recourse—acting in this way is vigilantism—maybe for good reason—but it’s frustrating to not have recourse>
In the “Possible to get unstuck” section, the quoted paragraph “designing laws mandating stronger sentences”—is one sided & stronger than I think it has a right to be (argues for a specific solution when the point is supposed to be specific solutions are hard)
Escapism & Fantasy:
The general premise here that <people try and frame things as a story> is talked about a lot. I wouldn’t reiterate this. I think it is worth emphasizing the link between this and powerlessness.
I don’t think that “(elon musk) got trump elected” is undisputedly true.
I generally don’t like this elon musk story—the lesson seems to be “even billionaires can (say they will) try to solve a problem (government inefficiency) and fail—no one knows how to make things work!”
But it seems likely this is just a case of <Elon specifically> being unable to solve something, and overestimate how complex/thorny things are. Presumably Bill Gates is having more impact on the things he wants to impact?
The story seems to say to me “trying to do things really quickly & surface level against these entities doesn’t work”. Which seems reasonable, but maybe is different than what it’s framed as?
Panicking:
This section restates the previous section!
The first point of Escapism & Fantasy—that people look for bad guys. This is redone w/ more bad guys.
Then the second point from E&F (that individual people grab for power) I would combine the Dominic example with the one from E&F. Maybe move both of those to this section.
The interesting part of this section doesn’t get enough time: “Very few people are trying to reclaim power in a useful way .. ” I would expand on the examples listed, and explore this idea more.
Core Paradox:
The first part of this is fine. A good recap. I don’t like the high-level explanation. I don’t see how cultural tradition or communal values (I assume this is what’s being pointed at here with “Traditional Eldritch Deities”) would help with the current deities of e.g. the economy.
Again I think this suffers from overloading of the phrase “Eldritch Deities”, and if this was cleared up maybe there’s a better point here.
Conclusion:
I like Progress & Agency. I like the call to change this.
I would like more discussion of what this looks like—similar to how I think the most interesting part of panicking was people actually trying to tackle the problem brought up in this post.
General Nitpicks
“Woke, wokeism”—unless I’m very off-base these have never seemed like ‘real’ terms to me. They’re woefully overdefined & reading them just makes me cringe.
The ability to which we understand certain things, e.g. human biology, seems overstated. Yes, we know many mechanisms we didn’t use to know & it seems like many things are an engineering problem, but like the body is just so complex—in the same way that modern Eldritch Deities are, even!