David Gretzschel

Karma: 48

David Gretzschel 31 Jan 2021 0:09 UTC
10 points
on: Notes on Judgment and Righteous Anger
The Stoic case is in contradiction of the idea of Aristotle’s idea of the “golden mean”.
The passions are in contradiction to virtue, because in order to act reasonably, your judgement must not be clouded by emotion. Virtuous anger is thus a contradiction.
Their advice would be to excise it immediately as it impairs the soundness of mind required for rational action.
Seneca’s “On Anger” makes this case citing examples from his times, nuances of anger, possible counterarguments and why they’re wrong, why Aristotle is wrong.....
[tried to write the same argument using Friston’s free energy principle, and mood as computational context supplying priors, but I got bored with it....]

David Gretzschel 12 Oct 2020 17:34 UTC
10 points
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: Thoughts on ADHD
[epsitemic status: mainly paraphrasing what Dr. Barkley is saying in those videos (worth watching!), maybe look deeper into the research for the claims he makes for a better/more precise understanding of the science, but that’s above my paygrade/interests]
No, from my understanding, ADHD is a single trait, that specifically affects those five affected brain regions, predictably leading to specific deficits in executive function.
those are:
Right Frontal Lobe (Orbital Prefrontal Cortex)
Basal Ganglia (Mainly Striatum and Globus Pallidum)
Cerebellum (central vermis area, more on right side)
Anterior Cingulate
Cortex Corpus Callosum (Primary Anterior Splenium)
And ADHD is also shown to be hereditary.
So ADHD is best understood as an alternative neurological phenotype, given the prevalence, not an uncommon one.
[Barkley doesn’t put it like that, but that part is just semantics]
You can’t spot the difference in an individual, because there’s too much variance in how brains usually look like/different areas are sized, but this “five affected brain regions”-pattern becomes apparent, when they looked at scans of a lot of people having the ADHD diagnosis and people who don’t have it.
You can focus on the “disorder”-part of the word, but whether it gets in your way enough to be diagnosed and called a disorder, strongly depends on your coping skills, your environment and also your goals.
For example, if your life is about being an idle rich person, who surfs on the beach and lazes around all day, there’s no need to get you on Ritallin.
But put someone in a school setting or work place where they must pay attention, they’ll have difficulty meeting expectations in a very predictable manner.

And also there’s presumably a second disorder called SCT, which is posited as being a second “Execuitve Disorder”-disfunciton, where people are slow and very dreamy.
And that can appear with, but also independent of ADHD (and ADHD doesn’t have to include SCT).
But also also, people don’t like SCT, because try diagnosing someone’s kid with “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo”-disorder without calling them stupid.
[ADHD doesn’t have a correlation to IQ, SCT I’m not sure..… also those labels are somewhat controversial and not everyone will use the same methodology, cause psychiatry is a sprawl]
And having ADHD increases risk of having other mental disorders, but this can partly be blamed on failing so hard, because you have ADHD.
[a life of constant failure isn’t great for the psyche and all that, but maybe it’s the different neurology too]
EDIT:
Also apparently ¹⁄₃ of ADHD cases happen because of a neuro strep-infection causing an autoimmune reaction that destroys those parts, during pregnancy. If that’s the case, there’s a high likelihood of seizures, too. Those acquired cases seem to also be lumped together. Won’t claim I fully understand, if/why that makes sense.

David Gretzschel 10 Oct 2020 22:58 UTC
10 points
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: Thoughts on ADHD
There is a known physiological cause, though. A 30% smaller brain volume/developmen than appropriate for your age in five distinct brain regions.
There’s also consideration of splitting apart SCT and ADHD. And of course, there’s common comorbidities.
And personally I believe, ADHD genes are just executing a high-variance strategy. [as being mildly brain-damaged leads to interesting neurological adaptations and tradeoffs]
source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2u8E5UqEHU&list=PLLZlFL4q6WTGKUsTMdHQ4l4Gu01lqEy8g&index=23

David Gretzschel 24 Sep 2020 20:34 UTC
7 points
on: Comparative Advantage is Not About Trade
Baudel is criticizing Ricardo’s model of “comparative advantage”, which only has two agents, Home and Foreign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Ricardian_model
Ricardo criticizes “comparative advantage” specifically for being too simple.
Your supposed explanation of it involves inland farmers, salt miners and English merchants connecting the two. This is indeed more complicated than Ricardo and thus seems to address Baudel’s supposed confusion, but it also has nothing to do with Ricardo’s model of “comparative advantage”.
It simply does not make sense to say that there is an “underlying comparative advantage” between the salt miners and the farmers, since they’re not trading with each other, they’re each just trading with the merchant.
The merchant has an “absolute advantage” in “transported salt” over the farmers. The salt miners can’t offer “transported salt”, since they’re in the “salt-mine salt” business.
”Salt mine salt” is completely worthless to the farmers, since their farms aren’t where the salt mines are.
The English merchant by the act of transport, turns worthless (to the farmers) “salt-mine salt” into valuable “transported salt”.
And if the English can force a monopoly over the river, sinking every non-English salt-trader who would turn “salt-mine salt” into “transported salt”, this model also involves coercion.

A mercantilist ruins the potential for “comparative advantage” by slapping on import taxes, which is also coercive.
Ricardo assumes a free market, and shows that “comparative advantage” is also specifically the gain only a free market can provide.
Just look how nice Portugal and England are to each other, seamlessly cooperating to maximize wine, cloth and minimize hours spent! Everybody gets richer without any coercion by being nice to each other. It shows that something beautiful would be lost, if England raised import taxes on Portugues wine and how it doesn’t serve English interests. And that Portugal would lose by raising import taxes on English cloth, as well.
That’s why classical economics is part science, part humanitarian philosophy.
Also the wiki article doesn’t mention pareto or pareto-optimal or optimization. So I’m guessing you’re confused what “comparative advantage” means, rather than Baudel.

David Gretzschel 24 Jul 2021 7:38 UTC
6 points
on: The topic is not the content
Replace “content” with “process” and this makes sense to me.

”content” and “topic” are not synonymous, for me of course.
But “topic” is like the headline and “content” is the text below it.
So both deal very much with the subject matter.
But also you use “content” synonymously with “topic” informally.
In a pars-pro-toto/totum pro tarte-way.
So this whole article feels super-confusing.

David Gretzschel 10 Oct 2020 11:40 UTC
6 points
on: Thoughts on ADHD
Agreed, there is no “decision theory/rationality under ADHD coherence constraints”. There should be, though.
In a sense, you learn to make it up for yourself, as you go along.

11.
You can mentally construct chains of necessary actions quickly and get a feeling of pleasurable productivity from doing so. It’s not much trouble to folow the association chains, circle back to the problem and even have a very thorough plan!
However, then executing that plan is boring, so it won’t get done.
12.
Extreme variance in motivation during the day; motivation is dependent on stimulant use and hidden, difficult to manage variables like “dopamine availability”.
When you don’t have it, you’re also not motivated to deal with it.
13. [your 1, I think]
Dazed, low consciousness states where nothing gets done and you mindlessly follow the dopamine gradient. The so called “hyperfocus”. [watching YouTube/playing video games/online chat/commenting on LessWrong...… damnit!]
Pretty sure, you could actually see less areas lighting up when neuroimaging.
Rejection-sensitivity? Not sure what it has to do with rejection. It’s just that what I find important when I’m properly “with it” will not occur to me. Even if it does, it won’t seem “plausible/meaningful” and be crowded out by stronger associations.
It’s not so much that the utility function changes, but more like your utility function not being loaded, leaving you in a default, feral state.
There might be vague awareness of this not being right at times, but there’s no surefire way of fully waking up. Taking more stimulants might help, but can also fuel a more fun, extended “hyperfocus”-episode.
14.
Trouble is, you often can make plans just fine, but you might as well not bother, since you won’t be able to know if/when you’re going to be properly “awake” to execute them.
15.
Computer use is absolutelly necessary, but also extremely risky.
16.
Load times of a couple seconds or less are often enough to lead you to do another more engaging thing to do on the computer. Software and webpages satisfice hard for “acceptable speed”, that can easily break your flow and disrupt concentration.
--
Not that those things are insurmountable. They are just very difficult, because you have to guard and manage your consciousness state from constant memetic threats trying to grab your extension. Internal (earworms, intrusive memories from TV shows, daydreaming, thinking thru random problems) and external (the internet, recommendations).
The digital world is actively hostile to an ADHDers coherence and there’s no best practices for guarding against it yet.
I’m working on it, though.

David Gretzschel 15 Feb 2021 0:23 UTC
4 points
on: Public transmit metta
My only experience with metta was in a 1-dollar store.
Looking around at all the different useful things I could buy having to spend very little, the thoughtfulness with which it was all laid, organic but not messy, everything easily discoverable out for scatterbrained people like me.
The gentleness of the implied “here’s the thing you need, and also two other little things that you didn’t know about, but make life a little easier in those hard times”.
I was thinking about the global supply chains, the factories, the stores, the organization of it, the people that make it all possible.
And I was overcome with love for the great venture of capitalism, our shared, collective undertaking to overcome scarcity and suffering and make this world nice!

Actually just remembering it, brings tears to my eyes.

David Gretzschel 3 Jul 2022 7:48 UTC
3 points
1
on: What Are You Tracking In Your Head?
“Finally, the obvious question: what extra information do you mentally track, which is crucial to performing some task well?”

When I try to cook something complicated by recipe, I go over each line of the recipe and previsualize all the corresponding physical actions.
I previsualize the state, amount, location and the transitions for each object. Objects = {pots, pans, ingredients, oil, condiments, package, piece of trash, volume of water, stove, task-completion times, hands, free seconds/minutes for cleaning during the cook, towel, tissue paper...}.
This tells me where the recipe is underspecified or needs to be adapted to my kitchen and allows me to fix the uncertainty beforehand, instead of giving me a puzzle in the moment where a bunch of parralelized tasks severely limit the estimated available interruption-free cognitive capacity. I try to go for a high-fidelity visual simulation and run it multiple times (obviously I speed it up).
If the recipe is already chunked into stages, I mentally review them seperately. I also think of the “why” of the steps within the recipe. It’s far easier to memorize a complex structure, if I can logically appreciate why it looks like that. Also I mentally set markers for expected free minutes, where I have time to re-review the next stage.

If I do all of that, cooking something complex becomes quite joyful and easy, instead of stressful.
I am not really a visual thinker. Visual thinking is aversive to me.
Or perhaps… it’s more anti-mimetic, as it’s just not a cognitive option that naturally occurs to me. Because I’m just far more performant in thinking by combining verbal abstractions. Path dependency and all that.
However, intellectually I know, that if I could sharpen and practice my visual thinking subskill, I can in time dramatically increase my cognitive capabilities.
For example, I recently found the recursive formula for cubes, just by visualizing it whilst drinking coffee in my gym. (no written notes)
m:= n+1
m^3= n^3 + 3n^2 + 3n + 1
[normally, you’d only use n instead of defining m as the successor, but I find this to be needlessly difficult, because it causes a ton of interference for me]

It was a bit challenging, but also something that I just started spontaneously doing for fun. And I’m pretty sure I could find the general formula for n^m (m being a natural number) too, next time I have a liminal context, that usually ends up seeing me preoccupied with fantasies and mentally rehearsing arguments.
For a true visual thinker, this probably is “just obvious” but this is me shrinking the gap. So… baby steps.

But during my day-to-day cognitive operations the hyerbolic utility functions (fancy way of saying “impatience”) means, I don’t want to use those underdeveloped skills.
Practicing unusual thought patterns with no clear momentary payoff is frustrating and cognitively exhausting. And if I’m drained like that, I’m at very high risk for the YouTube/book/daydreaming/websurfing-etc. -cognitohazards.

But for cooking something difficult, visualization has proven so extremely useful, that I’ll always do it there now. Because when I am lazy and just read and execute the recipe as I go along (my prior default), the whole process is far more cumbersome, frustrating and the outcome is unsatisfying. And I don’t actually get much better or more comfortable at cooking itself. Because visualization has such incredibly high applicability in this domain, I actually have far less internal resistance when using it. Therefore can visualize far better in this context, than normally. And by updating what I’m actually already capable of, I’m slowly making it more salient/less anti-mimietic/less aversive as an option.

David Gretzschel 15 Feb 2021 0:00 UTC
3 points
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Sequence introduction: non-agent and multiagent models of mind
Yeah, that used to bother me too, when I learned about multi agent theory and pondering it, I of course pointed my attention inwardly, trying to observe it.
Then agents arose and started talking with each other, arguing about the fact that they can’t tell if they’re actually representatives of underlying structures and coalitions of the neural substrate or just one fanciful part, that’s engaged in puppet phantasy play. Or what the boundaries between those two even are.
Or if their apparent existence is valid evidence for multi-agent theories being any good. Well, I suppose I wasn’t bothered, they were bothered :) I/They just really badly wanted a real-time brain scan to get context for my perceptions.
Eventually, I embraced the triplethink of operational certainty [minimizes internal conflict, preserves scarce neurotransmitters], meta doubt, and meta-meta awareness, that propositions that can be expressed in conscious language can’t capture the complexity of the neural substrate, anyway.
All models are wrong, yet modeling is essential.

David Gretzschel 8 Feb 2021 15:21 UTC
3 points
0
on: Killing the ants
“It’s easy to push the harm we do, or that we risk, outside of our zone of awareness; to live with, or to strive for, a false sense of purity, propped up by attention only to what can be readily seen, or to what registers, by the standards of everyday conscientiousness and social reproach, as “intentional.” ”
Small-animal deaths matter as much to me as whether I have an odd or uneven number of hairs on my head.
Certainly, something I could pay attention to as an intellectual exercise, but it’s not something that naturally registers as being related to right or wrong action.
You should not claim that people are this way because they strive for a sense of “false purity”, though.
This “sense of purity” (or a feeling desire for it, or feeling a lack of it) is simply not a universal human experience.

David Gretzschel 27 Jan 2021 12:23 UTC
3 points
on: Non-Coercive Perfectionism
“Perfectionism as a stubborn, sentimental and arrogant attachment to ones own high standards” is not my explanation for when I get stuck with spending excessive amounts of time trying to force marginal returns.
But a simple reframe is not a solution, because high standards are not the problem.

I think marginal returns being sub-optimal is obvious enough when it happens and “opportunity cost” is a cool word that humans probably understand instinctually, so I don’t know if this is a plausible explanation of the root cause.
Marginal returns for effort become quickly obvious to me, yet I cannot stop myself from expending it, anyway, which adds to the frustration!
I think this issue has nothing to do with something abstract like guilt or values, but from logistical issues at a lower level of the stack.

I flinch away from updating my plans when hitting marginal returns, because I am instinctively afraid of the sheer complexity of the inherent uncertainties of planning.
Broadening the scope of my awareness again, reincluding original assumptions, actions and schedules decided on, comparing it with what just happened and how it is evidence for/against for modified or entirely new relevant assumptions and having to define new actions and schedules..… going back to that level of uncertainty, that’s extremely difficult, when you are semi-comfortable with the certainty of executing one thing after another and doing only minimal, adaptive course changes.

I do not think that you are really attached to the planned outcomes, in as much you are attached to the flow of “knowing what to do”.
And mode switches like that are cognitively expensive.
Worse yet, the actual cost is mostly opaque to you, since you can’t see dopamine concentration and other neurotransmitter levels in real time [even if you could perfectly interpret them], and under uncertainty you’re more risk-avoidant.
The risk being, that you get derailed entirely and neither plan for nor act on and in fact, completely forget your original intention.

[my argument makes too many inferential leaps, I noticed, this is a summary of something that I would need more time to write; though I’m happy to elaborate on specific points]

David Gretzschel 2 Jul 2022 20:50 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: It’s Probably Not Lithium
Do you know, if we also observe an obesity-epidemic in the subgroup of people who average 25k+ in daily steps? That step-requirement is a good, high standard of “metabolically healthy” to isolate.
I belong in that group these days and it feels natural, relaxed and I feel far more energetic than when I was averaging 7k daily steps and was the sedentary nerd cliché, about a year ago. Now I am a nerd, who takes two walks per day, almost never sits and either stands or uses his office treadmill when on the computer.
Even before, I never really got fat. But I feel, that I might not have been “metabolically healthy”, because now I feel better. So I strongly suspect that a far higher than average step-count is a hard requirement for being “metabolically healthy”.

David Gretzschel 13 Oct 2020 16:58 UTC
2 points
on: The Sun Room
other keys:
Modafinil, if that doesn’t work.… more Modafinil. (combine with coffee)
Stage 8 of The Mind Illuminated. (Prasrabdhi/mental pliancy practice; obviously you’ll have to do stages 1 to 7 first, though)
Fully implementing GTD.
Liberally combine all of the above, have fun.

David Gretzschel 11 Feb 2024 8:36 UTC
1 point
0
on: Believing In
tl;dr: Words are hard and people are horrible at being precise with them, even when doing or talking about math.
[epistemic status: maybe I’d want an actual textbook here but good enough]
Looking into this, I have been grilling ChatGPT about what exactly a “belief” is in Bayesian Probability. According to it (from what I could gather), belief is a specific kind of probability. So a belief is just a number between 0 and 1 representing a probablity, but we use the label “belief” in specific contexts only. A prediction specifically is the pair of (statement about the future, belief). So a belief is not a prediction. Except when it is. I ask for examples and ChatGPT also loves going pars pro toto and belief is used synonymously with prediction a lot. And I’ve picked up the habit myself from reading here, before I ever learnt about the math at calculation level.
Personally, I dislike pars pro toto as I find that it makes things very confusing. So I will stop using the term “belief” to be synonymous with “prediction” from now on. Except when I won’t, because I suspect that it’s kind of convenient and sounds kind of neat.
source: https://chat.openai.com/share/03a62839-3efc-483d-bebd-4cefa9064dfd

David Gretzschel 15 Oct 2022 12:07 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: So, geez there’s a lot of AI content these days
Thanks, did not see nor thought to explore, as websites aren’t normally so sophisticated and feature-rich.

David Gretzschel 11 Oct 2022 13:31 UTC
1 point
0
on: So, geez there’s a lot of AI content these days
AI content is boring, if you’re not in that field. I’d like a button to quickly filter out all AI-tagged posts.

David Gretzschel 26 Jul 2022 16:04 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Alex Vermillion’s comment on: What Are You Tracking In Your Head?
Of course. Till they become too easy, then you’d need something harder.
Or you practice speed, I suppose.

David Gretzschel 25 Jul 2022 20:26 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Matthew Green’s comment on: It’s Probably Not Lithium
There is not. That’s why I was asking him if he knows. I was not interested in the effect of exercise. Exercise means, you do some activity a couple times per week.
I’m interested whether the obesety epidemic only affects the sedentary populatrion.
And if being or becoming non-sedentary is protective or curative.
25k steps for me means, that my treadmill is running constantly when I’m on my computer.
This is not really exercise. Movement is just my default state.

In that way, I have become closer to what an EAA-hunter-gatherer, than to a sedentary office worker does with his body.
[or I would, if this had been my lifetime norm instead of something I still get used to]
If the human body was sold as a machine, the sedentary lifestyle probably would void your warranty, because it’s rather extreme (dis)usage. Sedentary people being unhealthy is not surprising.
It’s surprising that some sedentary people aren’t.

Anyway, “being in near-constant motion” is too specific/complicated a metric.
So I’d just look for a step count high enough, that’s only feasibly doable by a non-sedentary person like me. Though, I guess any daily jogger can probably match or exceed 25k steps per day.
The group of people whose 80th quantile waking hour still has >1k steps.
That’s probably the better proxy, come to think of it.

David Gretzschel 22 Jun 2022 22:26 UTC
1 point
on: On A List of Lethalities
People at the LW-meetup have been despairing a bit explaining AI-risk to me in person.
I kept making various objections and the evenings were never long enough to get thru it all.
So I never managed to really grok the perspective before. Still don’t after one read-through. But I’m a lot closer and with enough rereads, I think I’ll get the full argument.
Thanks for writing this!

David Gretzschel 14 Feb 2021 22:12 UTC
1 point
on: The ecology of conviction
But I would like to add, that criticism can be constructive and affirming.
”Yes and” is also criticism, but it extends. “Yes but” affirms some of it. “Actually yes, but it’s more subtle than that.....” is also constructive, if the subtlety is explained.
Affirmation of “this is great!” isn’t actually all that rewarding.
After all, you as the author already knew that.
Also beware of wrong assuming as negativity what is actually blablabla nurture culture vs combat culture and so forth.…

Let’s talk about enthusiasm, though:
Enthusiasm for any idea is fleeting.
You might be enthusiastic about an idea when it just occurs to you and maybe you can tell the person who’s next to you at that moment and infect them with your enthusiasm, too.
But thru the process of writing an idea down, you must put it into words.
By creating an external representation, you get a clearer picture of it.
Perhaps now you can see hidden flaws and subtleties.
Even if all that reflection doesn’t change your understanding, you habituated yourself to the idea, so it will lose its grip over your dopamine system. Or from a different perspective, you lose the ability to find it beautiful.
Do you really own your idea, when you’re still enthusiastic about it, or does it own you?
Wrong question, because you’re in playful exploration mode, where this is not a useful frame.

But writing things down when you’re still exploring it, is premature.
Writing is best for when you’re sure about an idea and know its nuances, strengths, and weaknesses very well.
An idea matures if you sleep over it. Ponder it. Reflect on it.
Only then you can skillfully shape its presentation.

This is a problem of course. When you are most enthusiastic about something, you want to share it.
But..… I have written things, that I was enthusiastic about writing, but then later they weren’t well-written or well-argued. Sometimes you come back to your writing and it’s simply too verbose and in that spir