I’m not suggesting she came up with the term “frame control”—I’m suggesting she wrote several thousand words about gaslighting and didn’t mention the word “gaslighting.” It goes without saying that she didn’t engage at all with the vast commentary on the topic of gaslighting, which covers almost everything she said. I agree with the top comment from Anna Salamon that this post is clearly preliminary work and a few steps away still from good scholarship. A post integrating frame control, gaslighting, and the deployment of language in the exercise of power could get there; a post mentioning those things would be a significant improvement.
andavargas
Karma: 57
To connect the concepts here with some existing work: the special case of “frame control” where the result is self-doubt is also called “gaslighting.”
I think you might have an inflated sense of how hard it is to get on the NYT bestseller list. Just go a little bit viral for one week and you’re done. https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/13/16257084/bestseller-lists-explained
No language model will write a book without substantial aid, that ends up on the New York Times bestseller list. 97%
“Essays from the Noosphere: Twelve Artificial Intelligences Reflect on Life, the Universe, and Everything”
This seems to ignore the quite plausible scenario where an AI-written book finds itself a Schelling point for folks who use their bookshelf as a signaling mechanism. Being 100% AI and 0% human would be a boon in that scenario even if the book is a little rough around the edges.
Some of these answers are tragically simplistic. They’re also kind of meta (or perhaps one of the opposites of meta), because if a question really is merely an information retrieval device then the answer to “What is a question?” is of course going to be nothing more than a straightforward regurgitation of information. Our imaginations can be useful, however.
Let’s take the polythetic entitation approach. The canonical case of a question is a person using the [grammatical] interrogative mood to get information from another person. However, questions are an actual population of happenings in spacetime, and one by one we can relax or change the parameters(_) of the canonical case to see how the question-population’s body is actually shaped.
1. A one-person question. Someone can ask a question not to another person, but to oneself. This can lead to introspection and a reorganization or reanalysis of already-stored sensory information (underscoring the difference between “information” and “knowledge”), or to a search for new sensory information.
2. A search for information without the interrogative mood. Someone can use the indicative mood, for instance, to get information from another person. Instead of “Did you like the outcome of the election in Brazil?” you can have “The election in Brazil was crazy!” This can obfuscate the fact that information is being sought, in order to make the askee not feel like she is being interrogated or being pushed into a debate, perhaps making her feel more free to speak her mind in any response she might produce.
3. The interrogative mood without a search for information. Someone can use the interrogative mood to surface information or a topic in a conversation without revealing that they already know the information. Instead of “I hope your children get well soon, [Person who I just met but have previously heard about and know your kids are sick]” you can have “Do you have any children, [Person who I just met but have previously heard about and know your kids are sick]?” “Yes, [Person who I have just met and literally never knew existed]” “Oh that’s nice, how are they doing?” “Oh they’ve been sick for a few days” “Oh I’m sorry, I hope they get well soon.” In this case, questions can be used to cover over the probably awkward fact that someone has heard gossip about somebody else.
4. A search for information without language. Forget grammatical moods, sometime information can be sought from other people without even language. Facial expressions, wandering hands, etc. can be used to show that one wants information and would appreciate signals in return, perhaps a pointing finger or a well-timed moan.
We can take a step back from the polythetic algorithm and meta-gaze upon this post, however. It’s ostensibly asking “What are questions?” but it might also be trying to pry open a new angle on the related discourse, or prepare its audience for a subsequent production. There’s not really enough information in this post to tell; maybe I should just ask a question.
A theory that appeals to me although I am not an obesity researcher is the torpor/omega-ratio theory of obesity. It states that obesity results from an activation of hibernation metabolism (torpor) by an elevated ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 PUFAs in the diet. Humans do not hibernate but our mammalian ancestors did, and the theory is that those metabolic pathways are latent in our biochemistry.
The activation of hibernation metabolism and fat mass gain by high omega-6 to omega-3 ratios is documented in the literature for hibernating mammals, and the ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 PUFAs in Western diets have skyrocketed in the past several decades due to vegetable oils. I think I first heard of this theory from this blog. It could certainly be coupled with the Hyperpalatable Food Theory.