DaystarEld

• DaystarEld 22 Mar 2023 5:46 UTC

  3 points

  1

  in reply to: bglass’s comment on: AI Fables

  Hey Blasted, thanks for sharing :) I remember enjoying Well, will try to check out the others when I get a chance.

• DaystarEld 22 Mar 2023 0:33 UTC

  4 points

  1

  on: AI Fables

  Thanks for posting this Adam! (For those that don’t know, I’m Damon)
  
  I think another writing competition would be a good way to encourage stories like this, and am considering what the best way to structure that might be.
  
  Meanwhile, to add a bit more to the sorts of stories I think would be good to see, I think fiction is powerful because it not just allows to grapple with unusual or alien ideas, but also, if written from the perspective of characters with rich inner lives, see the world through a different lens and perspective. When we’re engaged in a character’s experience, their thoughts and reactions and emotions, some part of us can download what it’s like to be that sort of person, and can give us a blueprint for how to act in that sort of situation.

  Many people outside of the community don’t know what it’s like to be someone who grapples with problems this big, and many people inside of it are desperate for “better” ways to orient to topics that can be frightening, depressing, or painful to think of, such as widespread suffering in the world, or X-risk.

  Which is why, among the other types of AI Fables I’d love to see is at least one story about the struggles, internal and external, of a character facing a problem that threatens the world, all while still mostly going about a day-to-day life.

  Most stories don’t cover that in particular because most protagonists dealing with such stakes are in constant struggle against it throughout the story. But in our world, for X-risks we face, that’s just not true. Whether you’re trying to prevent nuclear winter or prevent unaligned AGI, you’ll end up spending most of your time among people or in a broader culture that isn’t particularly concerned about it, and in the latter case will likely think you’re kind of weird for worrying about it.

  Characters in fiction can do more than entertain or inform us by their actions; they can also inspire us, and give us frames and mental models to help handle difficult emotional situations.

  If you have ideas for short stories that might show that, or anything else Adam mentioned, feel free to message me too. Also feel free to reach out if you have thoughts on the best way to solicit such stories; I’m tentatively planning to put something together for late April or May.

• DaystarEld 20 Mar 2023 19:04 UTC

  4 points

  1

  in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Ta­boo­ing “Frame Con­trol”

  I agree rhat “asserting what someone is doing” can also be considered frame control or manipulation. But I think it’s much less often so, or much less dark artsy, because it’s referencing observable behavior rather than unverifiable/​unfalsifiable elements.

• DaystarEld 20 Mar 2023 4:20 UTC

  16 points

  9

  on: Ta­boo­ing “Frame Con­trol”

  Meanwhile the guru might be supplementing this with non-frame-control techniques. When they argue with you, they imply (maybe in a kind but firm voice, maybe with an undertone of social threat) that you’re kinda stupid for disagreeing for them

  This exact implication isn’t frame control, but the common thing I’ve seen gurus do that is more subtle is assert why you disagree with them in a way that reinforces their frame.

  “Kinda stupid” is overly crude, and might be spotted and feel off even among those who believe in them, but implying you just don’t “get” what they’re saying because you’re unenlightened or not ready for it is very effective at quieting dissent and maintaining their control.
  
  In general this is why I dislike any attempts to assert with confidence what someone thinks or feels, as well as why. I may be one of the only therapists who hates psychoanalysis, but I maintain that it’s almost always a bad thing to to anyone who isn’t inviting it, and sometimes even then.

Re­la­tion­ship Orientations

• DaystarEld 24 Feb 2023 19:41 UTC

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Quinn’s comment on: Build­ing and En­ter­tain­ing Couples

  I don’t think it’s particularly stupid to think this might work; it is in fact how most of our ancestors oriented to relationships. We just have higher standards, these days… for good and for ill.

• DaystarEld 24 Feb 2023 19:37 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: Build­ing and En­ter­tain­ing Couples

  Great post, will add it to my Relationships Orientations guide.
  
  I will note that society somewhat seems to depend on people prioritizing Building relationships over Entertaining ones, and this is certainly how things worked in the old days such that most of our parents and ancestors did not have the luxury to choose the most entertaining partners. Our standards as a whole have raised when it comes to relationships, in part due to unrealistic fictional representations, but our selective processes for finding partners have not increased proportionally.
  
  It is still (probably) better in most cases to try and find the most happiness you can with a Building relationship if you do want a family, than trying to build a life with someone who primarily fulfills the Entertainment criteria, so long as you and your partner can at least reach stable “contentment.” But people who do so should be very prepared for it to be genuinely hard to maintain a positive relationship with someone over decades without that “spark,” hence the frequency of infidelity and divorce.
  
  Life is just not optimized to give most people ~everything they want in a partner, which can suck to realize, but is (plausibly) important not to fool ourselves about, particularly for monogamous people.

• DaystarEld 22 Feb 2023 19:30 UTC

  2 points

  1

  on: Please don’t throw your mind away

  Great post, thank you for writing it. Helps to have something to link people to when trying to explain this, and also the list of examples are great.
  
  (And also Music in Human Evolution gave me a great “click” sensation, as soon as I read the list of facts in the beginning)

• DaystarEld 27 Jan 2023 6:35 UTC

  22 points

  14

  in reply to: LoganStrohl’s comment on: My Model Of EA Burnout

  Ah, thanks for saying that. It does feel worth noting that I am a huge proponent of Heroic Responsibility, so let me see if I can try in bullet point form at least, for now...

  1) People have much more capacity for agency than society tends to instill in them.

  2) The largest problems in the world are such that some people pretty much have to take it upon themselves to dedicate large chunks of their life to solving them, or else no one will.

  3) This in fact describes most of the widely admired people in history: those who saw a major problem in the world, decided to make it their life mission to solve it, and often sacrificed much to do so.

  4) For these reasons and more, I would never tell someone not to take Heroic Responsibility for things they care about. It would be hypocritical of me to do so. But...

  4a) I do caution people against taking Heroic Responsibility for things they feel pressured to value, as you note in this post, and

  4b) I do caution people to remember that most heroes historically do not in fact have happy endings.

  5) Furthermore and separately, for every hero who visibly took a major problem in the world upon their shoulders and was recognized for doing so, many more are invisible to us because they never managed to accomplish anything.

  6) Heroic Responsibility is not just a lens, it also provides power. It is a frame for motivating action, heightening agency, and expanding solution-space.

  7) Like most powers, it comes with a cost to those who try to wield it unprepared. Someone who has not internalized and accepted “failure” as a part of life, as an intrinsic part of the process for learning and growth, is more likely to let the power of Heroic Responsibility break them in pursuit of their cherished values.

  ...I think that’s it for now, though I can say more and expand on each of these. Thoughts so far?

• DaystarEld 25 Jan 2023 20:39 UTC

  56 points

  45

  on: My Model Of EA Burnout

  This all seems broadly correct, to me.

  But I think it’s worth noting that there’s an additional piece of the puzzle that I believe this one is largely codependent on: namely, that burnout often comes from a mismatch between responsibility and power.

  This can be seen in not just high-stress jobs like medicine or crisis work, but also regular “office jobs” and interpersonal relationships. The more someone feels responsible for an outcome, whether internally or due to external pressure/​expectations, the more power to actually affect change they will need to not feel that their efforts are pointless.

  EAs tend to be the sort of people who, in addition to taking large scale problems seriously, internalize the idea of Heroic Responsibility. This can work out well if they manage to find some form of work that helps them feel like they are making meaningful change, but if they do not, it can make the large, difficult, and often heartbreaking challenges the world faces all the more difficult to engage with. And for many, narratives of personal inadequacy start to creep in, unless they have proper CBT training, robust self-care norms, or a clear sense of boundaries and distinctions between what is in their power and what isn’t.
  
  Most people in society tend to do work that progresses causes and institutions with not-perfectly-aligned values to their own. The two main ways I’ve seen this not cause burnout is either 1) when they don’t really pay attention to the issues at all, or 2) when they feel like they’re still making a meaningful difference to progress their values in some way, shape or form. Lacking that, the mismatch of values will indeed tend to erode many aspects of their mental and emotional wellbeing until they grow numb to the value dissonance or burnout.

Pro­ce­du­ral Ex­ec­u­tive Func­tion, Part 1

• DaystarEld 26 Mar 2022 9:54 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: LoganStrohl’s comment on: Naturalism

  First things that come to mind are dance party/​club for jealousy, political rally for nationalism.

• DaystarEld 15 Mar 2022 19:51 UTC

  5 points

  on: Naturalism

  Thanks for writing all this, found it very interesting and (expectantly) useful!

  One thing that interests me is how to apply it to more abstract concepts; I’m not particularly interested in things found in the state of nature, like bugs and trees and such, but I am fascinated by people, emotions, thoughts, etc. So I find myself thinking things like “What can I do to increase my contact with ‘Jealousy’ or ‘nationalism’ etc” and coming up with ways to either find circumstances where people feel those things and observe them, or find ways to induce those feelings in myself for more careful study… but neither feels quite satisfying to what I actually want to better understand.

  Curious to know if you have any thoughts on this, or ideas for what might help better orient my frame of how to explore those things more directly in this way.

• DaystarEld 15 Mar 2022 18:32 UTC

  4 points

  on: Pa­tient Observation

  These concepts are great. It’s really neat noticing how well you’re teaching this in such a straightforward way, because it’s easy to imagining how someone else could try teaching it in a straightforward way and say it in a much more clumsy or ineffectual method. Like, the importance of noting that patient observation can/​must include being able to return to something your attention has bounced off of rather than keeping your attention on it consistently moment to moment feels really hard to overstate!

• DaystarEld 15 Mar 2022 18:03 UTC

  1 point

  on: Direct Observation

  These categories also feel super useful and worth distinguishing for a number of circumstances, such as one layer of trying to understand why two people could ostensibly experience the same thing, such as eyewitness a robbery, but remember it very differently.

• DaystarEld 15 Mar 2022 16:55 UTC

  6 points

  on: Knowing

  I seriously love this categorization of different ways of “knowing,” and am already thinking of ways to use it in some story or another.

• DaystarEld 27 Dec 2021 21:16 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: In Defense of At­tempt­ing Hard Things, and my story of the Lev­er­age ecosystem

  Thanks for writing this up, I had similar thoughts.
  
  Overall I’m glad Cathleen wrote this post, as it gave me a lot more insight into what life in Leverage was like and why, and more empathy for what people there have been going through. I really hope she and everyone else manages to carry on, be successful, not be stigmatized, and keep working on things that are important to them.

  But also, I have not updated in the direction of “Leverage was actually working on important or meaningful things that are valuable to other people outside its ecosystem.” I’m still waiting for that, and interested in seeing things that might indicate it. It would be fantastic to learn of new psychology research or insights that could help me and my friends and clients.

  This also seems central to why the question of whether Leverage is being treated unfairly now or not feels very different than whether they were treated unfairly before.

• DaystarEld 12 Dec 2021 9:14 UTC

  1 point

  on: Crit­i­cism Schedul­ing and Privacy

  This was fantastic. Even short as it is, it’s the most clear examination of criticism I’ve seen, and thorough enough an explanation to lead to truly deep understanding of how it relates to creativity and learning of all kind. Thanks for writing this!

• DaystarEld 11 Oct 2021 14:32 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: LoganStrohl’s comment on: Per­cep­tual dex­ter­ity: a case study

  From what I’ve seen over the past few years, your honed skill in focusing your attention and noticing what’s happening and putting what you notice into words allows you to discover what works or is healthy for you from “first principles,” for lack of a better phrase. This is different from most therapy, which circles inward from the outside of each problem. Learning from previous situations can shortcut the process, but therapy rarely has the time to actually teach people to do the thing you’ve learned, which seems to give you a much more gears-level understanding of what’s happening and whether you want to change it and how to go about that.
  
  That’s how it looks from the outside at least. Does it match your experience?

• DaystarEld 8 Oct 2021 2:28 UTC

  8 points

  on: Per­cep­tual dex­ter­ity: a case study

  >This is the sort of insight that, in my rough understanding of therapy, therapists hope people will make, but which people are often “too loud” in their own heads to ever notice.
  
  Absolutely. In the brief conversation I had with Logan in person a few years ago I remarked how much I enjoyed their writing, not-only-but-additionally-because it’s fascinating seeing them “rediscover/​recreate” so much of what I was taught to do professionally from their own unique angle. Since then they have continued to do so and also have in many ways gone beyond the standard.
  
  Excellent read, thanks for annotating it and to Logan for writing it :)