Systems programmer, security researcher and tax law/policy enthusiast.
Dentosal
Karma: 219
I wrote a blog post every day for a month, and all I got was this lousy collection of incoherent ramblings
Reflections on my woo-aversion
Some notes on supply, demand, cost and utility
Incoherent rambling about preference utilitarism
Does this match your viewpoint? “Suffering is possible without consciousness. The point of welfare is to reduce suffering.”
I have been associating the term “welfare” with suffering-minimization. (Suffering is, in the most general sense, the feelings that come from lacking something from the Maslow’s hierarcy of needs.)
It indeed seems like I’ve misunderstood the whole caring-about-others thing. It’s about value-fullfillment, letting them shape the world as they see fit? And reducing suffering is just the primary example of how biological agents wish the world to change.
That’s way more elegant model than focusing on the suffering, at least. Sadly this seems to make the question “why should I care?” even harder to answer. At least suffering is aesthetically ugly, and there’s some built-in impulse to avoid it.
EDIT: You’re arguing for preference utilitarism here, right?
Should we extend moral patienthood to LLMs?
EA ITT: An attempt
On morality, defection-robustness, and legibility incentives
Emotions, Fabricated
My frustrations: AI doom
I have not. A reasonable person would have. I think obtaining it rather complicated (in Finland, that is), but possibly worth it. Possibly worth it doesn’t mean worth it. I recognize that I’m probably not thinking clearly about this.
But what’s the reason to be productive beyond my natural abilities? I fear I would just use it all to make even more money, which doesn’t matter to my wellbeing at all. The admiration of others? That would be cheating. Self actualization? I don’t think depression will go away by just doing more stuff, the problem isn’t not doing enough, it’s not enjoying the results. Fixable with other medication? Possibly. (Go to step one)
Don’t be sorry. While I didn’t like it, it was worth it; no question about that. In the intro post on the 1st, I wrote:
That was achieved. I ought to feel proud of myself, but right now I just feel numb.
My motivation was in a way a mix of all four categories, the division between them quite unclear. I don’t think it was so much about writing, though, and more about expressing ideas. I want to be the kind of person who is known for having the kind of ideas I do have. And on the object level, I want those ideas to be known and discussed about. Writing is just the form in which ideas are supposed to be communicated, when aiming for clarity. That mostly covers B and D. The blog was also a good conversation-starter, too, and allowed me for a moment to define myself to others as a blogger instead of a tech worker. There’s certainly some self-image (C) aspects to this too, but it’s less prominent.
But especially in the beginning I also wanted to try writing to know whether I wanted it. I’m quite prone to expecting every new thing to feel awful, so trying things regardless is necessary. Eighty or so hours is not that steep of a price to pay for figuring that out. I rarely stick on things for such a long time, and when halfway through I was feeling that this makes no sense, I recognized that I was about to give up because it was hard, not because I disliked it.
I would gladly exchange my current work for writing texts like these, if I didn’t think money and issue and there was some external motivator making me do it. But currently quitting my job to write seems unwise; I’d just spent the freed up time on some form of mindless time wasting instead. I was hoping to change that view of myself by doing this, but alas. Truthseeking doesn’t cure depression; the cause and effect are intertwined.