It was definitely relevant! Thank you for the link—I think introducing this idea might assist communication in some of my relationships.
internetexplorer
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This is really useful information; thank you! I think I will change my approach to presenting my own research based on this comment. I have a limited biology background, but would love to watch a presentation of yours sometime.
This is always a good reminder :) Thank you!
I find it bizarre and surprising, no matter how often it happens, when someone thinks my helping them pressure-test their ideas and beliefs for consistency is anything except a deep engagement and joy. If I didn’t want to connect and understand them, I wouldn’t bother actually engaging with the idea.
I feel like I could have written this (and the rest of your comment)! It’s confusing and deflating when deep engagement and joy aren’t recognized as such.
It’s happened often enough that I often need to modulate my enthusiasm, as it does cause suffering in a lot of friends/acquaintances who don’t think the same way as I do.
I’ve tried the same with mixed effectiveness. In in-person contexts, nonverbal information makes it much easier to determine when and how to do this. I’ve found it’s more difficult online, particularly when you don’t know your interlocutor—sometimes efforts to affirm the connection and points of non-contention are read as pitying or mocking. I imagine this is partially attributable to the high prevalence of general derision on social media (edit: and of course partially attributable to faulty inference on my part).
It’s so interesting how everyone seems to have gotten different messages from this! I found this story helpful and wouldn’t cut out the length. I found I resonated most with Mr. Humman in terms of his values.
Some (of many) things I liked that Mr. Humman said:
None of us are strictly better than any other.
All of us are weaker in some places, and stronger in others; so nobody has the right to look down on anyone else.
“Oh, well,” Mr. Humman said, “I had really hoped more to hear of where you felt my own play was strong, or clever—the same sort of perspective that I offered you.” Mr. Humman kept any felt offense out of his voice; Humman was aware that not everyone could be as adept as he himself was, at social graces.
″...no matter how many fancy words you use, they won’t be as complicated as real reality, which is infinitely complicated. And therefore, all these things you are saying, which are less than infinitely complicated, must be wrong.”
“Intelligence is not a single line on a single spectrum,” declared Mr. Humman. “Reality is far more complicated.”
“But of course,” Mr. Humman continued, “all of that only matters under very artificial conditions imposed from outside, or as a contrived setup. In real life, we both have time to think and avoid obvious blunders before we move, so there is not a very great difference in real life. The reason I think it’s fair to say that I’m genuinely better at chess than a 5-year-old is that the 5-year-old is probably having trouble remembering some of the rules, and hasn’t learned all of the key ideas, like forks and skewers and pawn formations. But once you learn all those key ideas and get some practice with them, what else could there be to learn?”
Something I liked that Socratessa said:
“Uh, hi,” the woman said gingerly to Mr. Humman, when she saw him at the grocery. “I heard you had a bad experience today. I hope it didn’t crush your soul too much—or, uh, actually, I should say, uh, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t wanna.”
It would have been even better if Socratessa had said:
“Hi. I heard you had a bad experience today. Do you want to talk about it? I care about you and am interested in your experience.”
More generally, I wish Socratessa had been written with a little more depth of character (in particular: curiosity, sincerity). She sounds scared about the future and like she is looking for certainty and approval. I wonder what would have happened if she had expressed empathy for Mr. Humman after he shared he felt invalidated by Mr. Assi. I wonder what would have happened if they had that conversation about politics. In a different story, I can imagine her and Mr. Humman being friends.
One theme I’ve been thinking about recently is how bids for connection and understanding are often read as criticism. For example:
Person A shares a new idea, feeling excited and hoping to connect with Person B over something they’ve worked hard on and hold dear.
Person B asks a question about a perceived inconsistency in the idea, feeling excited and hoping for an answer which helps them better understand the idea (and Person B).
Person A feels hurt and unfairly rejected by Person B. Specifically, Person A feels like Person B isn’t willing to give their sincere idea (and effort to connect) a chance, so shuts down and labels Person B as an idea-hater.
Person B feels hurt and unfairly rejected by Person A. Specifically, Person B feels like Person A isn’t willing to give their sincere question (and effort to connect) a chance, so shuts down and labels Person A as a question-hater.
This seems like a huge source of human suffering, and I have been Person A and Person B in different interactions. Does anyone else resonate with this? Do you see things differently?
Awesome! I unfortunately can’t initiate DMs on here but if you send me one I will respond :-)
Hey Cole! I also went through a period of feeling pretty worried about s-risks, and have recently come out the other side. If you’d like someone to talk to, or even any advice re: any materials you might find helpful for coming to accept/loosen the grip of fear and anxiety, my inbox is open (I’m a clinical psych PhD student and have lots of resources for existential/humanist therapy, compassion-focused therapy, CBT, DBT, etc.). I’ve probably read a lot of what you’re worried about, so you don’t need to worry about having any hazardous effect on me :)
Also, I’d love to learn more from you about your research! I like your posts.
Thank you so much for your response! That’s a great point; I’ve now added links. If this doesn’t resonate with people I will try again with more universal concepts :) I appreciate the feedback!
Creative intellectual play for the day. Can you add another observation to each set? Would you rearrange the sets in any way? Can you unite sets 1, 2, and 3 under a higher-order concept/rule/group?
(1) Plato’s forms, Real numbers, logarithmic functions, taxonomic lumpers.
(2) Mycelium networks, infinite recursion, exponential functions, taxonomic splitters.
(3) Aristotle’s hylomorphism, Langan’s CTMU, dialectical reasoning, Derridean Différance.
No wrong answers. Confident everyone has something insightful to contribute :D
Hey! I reread this comment exchange and wanted to update my response. The crux of what I wanted to convey was that I value creative intellectual play and hold the belief that telling others what I see in my own creative writing might limit that (because I want people to make their own meaning without unnecessary bias from my perspective). I am now realizing my responses may have felt dismissive and/or counterproductive, and I regret that. If you’re still interested, please feel free to shoot me a message and I’m happy to discuss/share more privately :)
As a “leftist” person, agreed! We’re all pretty fragmented. I’m working on creatively writing about these dynamics through the medium of a narrativized self. Sometimes the message doesn’t land as intended but all we can do is keep on trying to connect on the basis of shared consciousness (and faith in the goodness of everyone at their core).
My cross-domain weirdtopia looks like a hermeneutics of faith. For me, this looks like a nonprojection of own utopias onto others’ utopias (i.e. autonomy support (for everyone, but extra-please for young ones!)), epistemological humility without compromising self-trust, self- and other-compassion, loving kindness, curiosity, self- and other-forgiveness, prizing of all beings/agents as uniquely and inherently valuable without exception, offering others opportunities to get their basic psychological (and physical) needs met, a felt understanding of self and other as intertwined, plentiful good-faith dialogue, radical acceptance, and a nondogmatic interpretation of all of this. I wonder how others might interpret this? :)
Nice! Since writing this comment I’ve adopted something like a 3:1 ratio of the former to the latter strategy (having previously been partial to the latter strategy). I like how my life has changed in response.
Would be interested in an update when you post!
I decided to exercise my smile muscles, smiling as widely as I could for about a minute, three times a day, for 30 days. The result is that my smile does feel subtly more natural and charismatic.
Interesting! I would have predicted that intervening at the zygomaticus major and orbicularis oculi muscles would be more productive (i.e., to mimic a Duchenne smile).
Would be interested in an update if you try this :)
We can proof by contradiction that if one agent is capable of predicting another agent, the other agent cannot in turn do the same.
I’m glad you responded to this as this stood out to me too.
Maybe quines can illustrate how there is no by-default infinite regress.
Quines only illustrate that there is no by-default infinite regress within the assumed system (here, a formal, deterministic string-rewriting game), which is built on assumptions themselves subject to the Munchhausen Trilemma.
I’m not trying to be pedantic here; I think it’s pretty important to consider the implications of this.
I think consequentialism works pretty well in low-adversarialness environments, virtue ethics works in medium-adversarialness environments, and then deontology is most important in the most adversarial environments, because as you go from the former to the latter you are making decisions in ways which have fewer and fewer degrees of freedom to exploit.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. It seems we could generalize this beyond adversarialness to uncertainty more broadly: In a low-uncertainty environment, consequentialism seems more compelling; in a high-uncertainty environment, deontology makes sense (because as you go from the former to the latter you are making decisions in ways which rest on fewer and fewer error-prone assumptions).
However, this still feels unsatisfying to me for a couple of reasons: (1) In a low-uncertainty environment, there is still some uncertainty. It doesn’t seem to make sense for an actor to behave in violation of their felt sense of morality to achieve a “good” outcome unless they are omniscient and can perfectly predict all indirect effects of their actions.[1] And, if they were truly omniscient, then deontic and consequentialist approaches might converge on similar actions—at least Derek Parfit argues this. I don’t know if I buy this, because (2) why do we value outcomes over the experiences by which we arrive at them? This presupposes consequentialism, which seems increasingly clearly misaligned with human psychology—e.g., the finding that maximizers are unhappier than satisficers, despite achieving “objectively” better outcomes, or the finding that happiness-seeking is associated with reduced happiness.
Relating this back to the question of reasoning in high-adversarial environments, it seems to me that the most prudent (and psychologically protective) approach is a deontological one, not only because it is more robust to outcome-thwarting by adversaries but more importantly because it is (a) positively associated with wellbeing and empathy and (b) inversely associated with power-seeking. See also here.
- ^
Moreover, one would need to be omniscient to accurately judge the uncertainty/adversarialness of their environment, so it probably makes sense to assume a high-uncertainty/high-adversarialness environment regardless (at least, if one cares about this sort of thing).
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You’re a beautiful writer :) If you ever decide to host a writing workshop, I’d love to connect/attend.
IMO the best option here would be a piece of fiction that shows the experience of paranoia from the inside.
I’m curious whether you got a chance to read my short story. If you can suspend your disbelief (i.e., resist applying the heuristic which might lead one to write the story off as uncritically polemical), I think you might appreciate :-)
Hi! Yes :) I think a good framework for working on anxiety on your own is Self-Compassion Therapy (SCT). I like SCT for existential anxiety in particular because its success doesn’t hinge on your ability to change your external circumstances and it doesn’t presuppose your degree of worry is disproportionate relative to the “actual threat” posed by the object of your worry. Here are some exercises published by Kristin Neff, a well-regarded self-compassion researcher/practitioner: https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-practices/. There are also lots of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) guided meditations online, e.g., https://www.jeffersonhealth.org/conditions-and-treatments/mindfulness-based-stress-reduction/mindfulness/mbsr-guided-practices—I’d look into the body scans to start, as anxiety often manifests as muscle tension and intervening on muscle tension can indirectly alleviate anxiety.
If you have access to insurance coverage for therapy, I would additionally recommend looking into Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). I’m partial to EFT overall for most clinical presentations, though I like CBT for social anxiety as I think social exposures can be quite powerful.
Outside of targeted mental health interventions, I’d recommend making time for loved ones, community, fun, creative play, exercise, etc. and limiting exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli where possible. This may be obvious but it’s easy to forget about the basics.