I definitely have a strong sense reading this post that “those environmental conditions would not cause any problems to me” and I am trying to understand whether this is true or not, and if so, what properties of a person make them susceptible to the problems.
Do you have any perception about that? I wonder things like:
Would you circa 2010 have been able to guess that you were susceptible to this level of suffering, if put in this kind of environment?
What proportion of, say, random intellectually curious graduate students do you think would suffer this way if put into this environment?
Do you have some sense of what psychological attributes made you susceptible, or advice to others about how to be less susceptible?
I have a lot of respect for what I know of you and your work and I’m sorry this happened.
(clarification edit: I have some sympathy for why it could be good to have an intellectual environment like this, so if my comment seems to be implying a perspective of “would it be possible to have it without people suffering”, that’s why.)
Would you circa 2010 have been able to guess that you were susceptible to this level of suffering, if put in this kind of environment?
I would have had difficulty imagining “this kind of environment”. I would not have guessed that an outcome like this was likely on an outside view, I thought of myself as fairly mentally resilient.
What proportion of, say, random intellectually curious graduate students do you think would suffer this way if put into this environment?
30%? It’s hard to guess, and hard to say what the average severity would be. Some people take their jobs less seriously than others (although, MIRI/CFAR encouraged people to take their job really seriously, what with the “actually trying” and “heroic responsibility” and all). I think even those who didn’t experience overtly visible mental health problems would still have problems like declining intellectual productivity over time, and mild symptoms e.g. of depression.
Do you have some sense of what psychological attributes made you susceptible, or advice to others about how to be less susceptible?
Not sure, my family had a history of bipolar, and I had the kind of scrupulosity issues that were common in EAs, which probably contributed.
What advice would I give? If you’re deeply embedded in a social scene try finding more than one source of info outside the scene, e.g. friends or strangers, to avoid getting stuck in a frame. If you’re trying to modify your mind, be patient with yourself, don’t try to force large changes; rather, allow yourself to attend to problems with your current approach and let “automatic” processes cause most of the actual behavior change. If you have sleep issues, don’t stress out about sleeping all day, try other activities like taking a walk; if they persist talking to someone outside your friend group (e.g. a therapist) might be a good idea.
I would very much like to encourage people to not slip into the “MIRI/CFAR as one homogenous social entity” frame, as detailed in a reply to the earlier post.
I think it’s genuinely misleading and confusion-inducing, and that the kind of evaluation and understanding that Jessica is hoping for (as far as I can tell) will benefit from less indiscriminate lumping-together-of-things rather than more.
Even within each org—someone could spend 100 hours in conversation with one of Julia Galef, Anna Salamon, Val Smith, Pete Michaud, Kenzie Ashkie, or Dan Keys, and accurately describe any of those as “100 hours of close interaction with a central member of CFAR,” and yet those would be W I L D L Y different experiences, well worth disambiguating.
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Julia or Dan or Kenzie, I would expect them to have zero negative effects and to have had a great time.
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Anna or Val or Pete, I would want to make absolutely sure they had lots of resources available to them, just in case (those three being much more head-melty and having a much wider spread of impacts on people).
It’s not only that saying something like “100 hours with CFAR” would provide no useful update without further information, it’s that it makes it seem like there should be an update, while obfuscating the missing crucial facts.
And as someone who’s spent the past six years deeply embedded in first CFAR and then subsequently MIRI, Jessica’s experience greatly disresembles mine. Which in no way implies that her account is false! The point I’m trying to make is, “MIRI/CFAR” is not (at all) a homogenous thing.
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Julia or Dan or Kenzie, I would expect them to have zero negative effects and to have had a great time.
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Anna or Val or Pete, I would want to make absolutely sure they had lots of resources available to them just in case (those three being much more head-melty and having a much wider spread of impacts on people)
As a complete outsider who stumbled upon this post and thread, I find it surprising and concerning that there’s anyone at MIRI/CFAR with whom spending a few weeks might be dangerous, mental-health-wise.
Would “Anna or Val or Pete” (I don’t know who these people are) object to your statement above? If not, I’d hope they’re concerned about how they are negatively affecting people around them and are working to change that. If they have this effect somewhat consistently, then the onus is probably on them to adjust their behavior.
Perhaps some clarification is needed here—unless the intended and likely readers are insiders who will have more context than me.
(Edited to make top quote include more of the original text—per Duncan’s request)
Small nitpicky request: would you be willing to edit into your quotation the part that goes “just in case (those three being much more head-melty and having a much wider spread of impacts on people)”?
Its excision changes the meaning of my sentence, into something untrue. Those words were there on purpose, because without them the sentence is misleadingly alarming.
FWIW, it is concerning to me, too, and was at least a little bit a point of contention between me and each of those three while we were colleagues together at CFAR, and somewhat moreso after I had left. But my intention was not to say “these people are bad” or “these people are casually dangerous.” More “these people are heavy-hitters when it comes to other people’s psychologies, for better and worse.”
I have a decently strong sense that I would end up suffering from similar mental health issues. I think it has a lot to do with a tendency to Take Ideas Seriously. Or, viewed less charitably, having a memetic immune disorder.
Xrisk and, a term that is new to me, srisk, are both really bad things. They’re also quite plausible. Multiplying how bad they are by how likely they are, I think the rational feeling is some form of terror. (In some sense of the term “rational”. Too much terror of course would get in the way of trying to fix it, and of living a happy life.) It reminds me of how in HPMoR, everyone’s patronus was an animal, because death is too much for a human to bear.
What proportion of, say, random intellectually curious graduate students do you think would suffer this way if put into this environment?
This seems like the sort of thing that we would have solid data on at this point. Seems like it’d be worth it for eg. MIRI to do an anonymous survey. If the results indicate a lot of suffering, it’d probably be worth having some sort of mental health program, if only for the productivity benefits. Or perhaps this is already being done.
I definitely have a strong sense reading this post that “those environmental conditions would not cause any problems to me” and I am trying to understand whether this is true or not, and if so, what properties of a person make them susceptible to the problems.
Do you have any perception about that? I wonder things like:
Would you circa 2010 have been able to guess that you were susceptible to this level of suffering, if put in this kind of environment?
What proportion of, say, random intellectually curious graduate students do you think would suffer this way if put into this environment?
Do you have some sense of what psychological attributes made you susceptible, or advice to others about how to be less susceptible?
I have a lot of respect for what I know of you and your work and I’m sorry this happened.
(clarification edit: I have some sympathy for why it could be good to have an intellectual environment like this, so if my comment seems to be implying a perspective of “would it be possible to have it without people suffering”, that’s why.)
I would have had difficulty imagining “this kind of environment”. I would not have guessed that an outcome like this was likely on an outside view, I thought of myself as fairly mentally resilient.
30%? It’s hard to guess, and hard to say what the average severity would be. Some people take their jobs less seriously than others (although, MIRI/CFAR encouraged people to take their job really seriously, what with the “actually trying” and “heroic responsibility” and all). I think even those who didn’t experience overtly visible mental health problems would still have problems like declining intellectual productivity over time, and mild symptoms e.g. of depression.
Not sure, my family had a history of bipolar, and I had the kind of scrupulosity issues that were common in EAs, which probably contributed.
What advice would I give? If you’re deeply embedded in a social scene try finding more than one source of info outside the scene, e.g. friends or strangers, to avoid getting stuck in a frame. If you’re trying to modify your mind, be patient with yourself, don’t try to force large changes; rather, allow yourself to attend to problems with your current approach and let “automatic” processes cause most of the actual behavior change. If you have sleep issues, don’t stress out about sleeping all day, try other activities like taking a walk; if they persist talking to someone outside your friend group (e.g. a therapist) might be a good idea.
I would very much like to encourage people to not slip into the “MIRI/CFAR as one homogenous social entity” frame, as detailed in a reply to the earlier post.
I think it’s genuinely misleading and confusion-inducing, and that the kind of evaluation and understanding that Jessica is hoping for (as far as I can tell) will benefit from less indiscriminate lumping-together-of-things rather than more.
Even within each org—someone could spend 100 hours in conversation with one of Julia Galef, Anna Salamon, Val Smith, Pete Michaud, Kenzie Ashkie, or Dan Keys, and accurately describe any of those as “100 hours of close interaction with a central member of CFAR,” and yet those would be W I L D L Y different experiences, well worth disambiguating.
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Julia or Dan or Kenzie, I would expect them to have zero negative effects and to have had a great time.
If someone spent 100 hours of close interaction with Anna or Val or Pete, I would want to make absolutely sure they had lots of resources available to them, just in case (those three being much more head-melty and having a much wider spread of impacts on people).
It’s not only that saying something like “100 hours with CFAR” would provide no useful update without further information, it’s that it makes it seem like there should be an update, while obfuscating the missing crucial facts.
And as someone who’s spent the past six years deeply embedded in first CFAR and then subsequently MIRI, Jessica’s experience greatly disresembles mine. Which in no way implies that her account is false! The point I’m trying to make is, “MIRI/CFAR” is not (at all) a homogenous thing.
As a complete outsider who stumbled upon this post and thread, I find it surprising and concerning that there’s anyone at MIRI/CFAR with whom spending a few weeks might be dangerous, mental-health-wise.
Would “Anna or Val or Pete” (I don’t know who these people are) object to your statement above? If not, I’d hope they’re concerned about how they are negatively affecting people around them and are working to change that. If they have this effect somewhat consistently, then the onus is probably on them to adjust their behavior.
Perhaps some clarification is needed here—unless the intended and likely readers are insiders who will have more context than me.
(Edited to make top quote include more of the original text—per Duncan’s request)
The OP cites Anna’s comment where she talked about manipulating people.
Small nitpicky request: would you be willing to edit into your quotation the part that goes “just in case (those three being much more head-melty and having a much wider spread of impacts on people)”?
Its excision changes the meaning of my sentence, into something untrue. Those words were there on purpose, because without them the sentence is misleadingly alarming.
Fair point! Done.
It is still concerning to me (of course, having read your original comment), but I can see how it may have mislead others who were skimming.
FWIW, it is concerning to me, too, and was at least a little bit a point of contention between me and each of those three while we were colleagues together at CFAR, and somewhat moreso after I had left. But my intention was not to say “these people are bad” or “these people are casually dangerous.” More “these people are heavy-hitters when it comes to other people’s psychologies, for better and worse.”
I have a decently strong sense that I would end up suffering from similar mental health issues. I think it has a lot to do with a tendency to Take Ideas Seriously. Or, viewed less charitably, having a memetic immune disorder.
Xrisk and, a term that is new to me, srisk, are both really bad things. They’re also quite plausible. Multiplying how bad they are by how likely they are, I think the rational feeling is some form of terror. (In some sense of the term “rational”. Too much terror of course would get in the way of trying to fix it, and of living a happy life.) It reminds me of how in HPMoR, everyone’s patronus was an animal, because death is too much for a human to bear.
This seems like the sort of thing that we would have solid data on at this point. Seems like it’d be worth it for eg. MIRI to do an anonymous survey. If the results indicate a lot of suffering, it’d probably be worth having some sort of mental health program, if only for the productivity benefits. Or perhaps this is already being done.