Unreal

Karma: 2,891

Unreal 1 Jul 2026 13:36 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Avery Lea-Smith’s comment on: Rest Days vs Recovery Days
I have a long history with depression, low motivation, and some executive dysfunction. So I don’t think this post is geared toward workaholics in particular.
The main takeaway you might take from this post is to listen to your body / stomach—something that isn’t your head, mind, thoughts, ideas, preconceived notions.
There’s a mindful decision-making process that might be helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK6UXqBdwU8&t=38s

Unreal 6 Jun 2026 19:25 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Accepting Death & Adult Responsibility
Wait, what? You just said NOT to fight these things. If I’m dissatisfied, why wouldn’t I try to change that? If I can’t or won’t change something, why would I be dissatisfied?
Dissatisfaction is what happens when you really don’t know, but you must know. It’s an uncomfortable state of true doubt and lack of resolution. Then you seek, and that’s a whole hero’s journey.
Fighting is what happens when you “figure it out” (but it’s just thoughts and ideas) and then cling to your position, and then fight the world or other people or yourself. It’s what starts wars and all conflict.
I recommend the former, not the latter.

Unreal 6 Jun 2026 19:12 UTC
0 points
−2
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Accepting Death & Adult Responsibility
And what is that, exactly? How is it destroyed by resisting death or denying physical embodiment?
I’m pointing at common sense. If you had to say it to a three year old, what is sacred and precious?
“You and me” “The world” “Goodness” “Life” “A pure heart” You can come up with your own list.
There are many stories about resisting death resulting in the destruction of the sacred, and they are illustrative.
Wandavision, Harry Potter’s Voldemort, Mr Freeze from Batman, Naruto’s Orochimaru, Snow White. Perhaps you can think of more.
Not sure what you mean RE: denying physical embodiment.
Attachment to the avoidance of death leads to people stop caring about the things that matter (which can’t be measured), and just plain forgetting about it or dismissing it or ignoring it or covering it over. The result is a world like the one we’re in: a host of existential threats that weren’t there centuries ago. Due to a collective forgetting of the sacred, resulting in destruction of those things.

Unreal 6 Jun 2026 18:46 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Accepting Death & Adult Responsibility
Are you saying that only misguided dualists avoid suffering?
No.
What does “avoid” mean?
Avoiding death would mean something like attaining immortality of some kind. (E.g. by uploading yourself, which is at least partially driving us toward AGI development.)

Accepting Death & Adult Responsibility

Unreal5 Jun 2026 19:23 UTC

−25 points

10 comments4 min readLW link

Unreal 12 May 2026 22:02 UTC
2 points
0
on: Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them
I responded to this post through a video. There’s a transcript.
https://open.substack.com/pub/renshin/p/lesswrong-responses-2?r=zccwh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Unreal 11 May 2026 16:50 UTC
2 points
0
on: Here’s the exit.
A response to this post, in form of a video. I posted it off-site. Hope that’s not in violation of anything.
https://open.substack.com/pub/renshin/p/less-wrong-responses-1?r=zccwh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Unreal 11 May 2026 13:59 UTC
2 points
0
on: Here’s the exit.
these distracting thoughts can come to form autonomous programs that memetically evolve to have something like survival and reproductive instincts
In Buddhism these are called sanskaras. Although sanskaras is a huuuge category and includes more than just “thoughts.” They are considered to have the key features of tryig to reproduce / replicate / create, and of some kind of repetition or patterning. In any case sanskaras are one of the five skandhas that beings mistakenly self-identify as, or cling to, and this is the cause or origin of suffering / dukkha.

Unreal 14 Jan 2026 21:51 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Richard_Ngo’s comment on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
Would it be terribly rude for me to point out that … you guys are making up a lot of shit about Buddhism? It’s like stumbling into a meetup of Creationists randomly speculating about physics and biology. It’s so far removed that it isn’t worth correcting you. You should just scrap it and start over. Or use very different terminology to talk about what it is you actually wish to talk about. You guys aren’t even close to describing the differences between Theravada and Mahayana.
“Dismantling your motives” is an interesting phrase, but I don’t know what it means. What does this actually entail? How does one achieve this?
I used to suffer from burnout all the time before I started Buddhist training. After a lot of effort, I did ‘dismantle’ that pattern. Does this count as dismantling my motives? Are we certain that the culture that perpetuates burnout as a common pattern among otherwise young, healthy people isn’t the cultural program that ‘dismantles your motives’?

Unreal 13 Jan 2026 22:51 UTC
5 points
0
on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
REVIEW
LessWrong is stuck in looped ways of being and thinking, and this was AN attempt at opening the door a bit, but I have the sense it wasn’t a very effective attempt.
I still appreciate the attempt. I’m not that good at meeting LW where it is, but I care to try.
I am now thinking that using fiction or story would maybe be a better avenue.
The main sticking points seem to be
- how does letting go actually make someone more effective (does the ‘effectiveness’ need to be legible to lots of ppl? I dont think so personally, but effectiveness can be objective here, not about people’s personal opinions)
- why wouldn’t there be a worldview or set of worldviews sufficient to ‘win’ at problems? i don’t know how to explain or express this right now.

Unreal 13 Jan 2026 16:55 UTC
5 points
0
on: Eliezer’s Unteachable Methods of Sanity
I cannot tell if you writing this is actually helpful or not. Nonetheless I personally appreciate the attempt. I’m inspired to try to speak a little about how I see it.
I live in a community where ‘going insane’ is seen as a volitional act (volitional does not imply self-consciously aware; the vast majority of intentions or volitional actions are not in self-conscious awareness). So if someone acts in an insane way, it’s seen as a mistake on their part, and we offer support as it seems appropriate. We don’t bother blaming people. People != Their patterns of behavior or choices. And agreeing with you above, People != Personalities, on any level.
When we talk about how to avoid insanity, we speak about taking “adult” responsibility, where “adult” is a technical term. Being an ‘adult’ is a stage of life; it’s not where everyone needs to be. But we do see that lots of people who are ‘of age’ (18+) have been stuck in the ‘adolescent’ stage. (For instance, I am still working through this in my late 30s.) Another word we might use is ‘parent’. Who’s a parent? Versus a baby or child or teenager, which are also valid life stages.
A properly responsible parental adult does not go insane (in this case, “going insane” could mean something like—have a psychotic break, get too depressed to get out of bed and feed the kids, throw a temper tantrum, or intentionally harm themselves such that they can’t take care of their kids). “does not go insane” here means these things are NOT on the table; it’s not in the conversation; it’s not an option; it’s not a possibility. This is importantly NOT some form of denial or active forcing. It’s just gone from the picture. The whole world has moved such that this cannot happen. It’s a clean cut. It’s so clean that no one even remembers what the problem might have been. No one even considers it. What are we talking about? It’s not worth wasting even one second on it.
Note: We acknowledge that nowadays, lots of literal parents with children aren’t responsible adults in this sense. And this might be sounding harsh and unforgiving or something, but again, we don’t blame anybody here. But yes, it’s a choice. We observe that society has been degrading people’s ability to initiate into proper adulthood, but we should also acknowledge that we have been complicit in giving up our right to become an adult, to be initiated, and there’s no comfortable way to deflect.
So there’s a lot more aged adolescents in the world, and the global machine mind wants that, for reasons that are pretty nefarious and evil imo, but that’s another topic.
So the mechanism I’m speaking to is: Grow Up
There’s a lot of parts to this, and it has taken me years to even work this out for myself, but that sums it up.
Some of the parts:
- Everything I do matters and has consequences
- I care. I have compassion for myself and others and, in fact, all life.
- It’s not about me (as Eliezer says above).
One step for ‘it’s not about me’ (which is a step out of adolescence and into adulthood) is to act for something larger than me. To live for something larger than myself. This can be as simple as living for one’s family or children. But it can be as big as living for all of planet earth or for all beings through space and time. But I’d suggest starting with the smaller stuff, because for most people, ‘planet earth’ or “all of humanity” is conceptual, and that’s not gonna cut it for actually making the shift.
Making concrete, tangible sacrifices for something greater than myself is a pathway. In fact, it’s good to train doing this all the time, so that nothing I do is for the sake of maintaining the character of my own story.

Unreal 9 Oct 2025 21:29 UTC
0 points
0
on: What, if not agency?
I might be missing something, but the “soloware” project seems very likely to escalate misuse of AI by human beings and make things far less transparent (b/c now everything is custom-made and it’s harder to track the cause-effect chains of how anything was created, and imo we want a drastic increase in accountability for every action taken by human and machine).
It’s going to take all the bad parts of individualist capitalist patterns / competition-seeking and turn the dial up, which is basically what happens anytime anyone applies collective-optimization pressure to a technology.
I see a lot of risk and am unclear on the benefits.
But let me try to articulate why one might see soloware as a good idea…
If I believed that the issue with machines was this emphasis on ‘replacing humans’ by automating stuff, rather than empowering humans, then I might get what was better about this approach. <-- This is VERY succinct. But hopefully enough.
However:
There’s nothing inherently ‘robust’ about human beings’ alignment, at any scale. The alignment issue isn’t just about artificial intelligences; it extends to human intelligence also, and in fact extends to just “intelligence” generally. Intelligence doesn’t have any way to align itself, at any scale. (It needs ‘wisdom’ which is in some sense the “opposite” of intelligence.)
You seem to point at this yourself with point #2 RE: humans and indifference risks. The problem isn’t rooted in the AI’s agency; it’s also in the human’s own agency. You won’t solve one without solving both.
So I guess it raises a Question:
Does one believe human intelligence or empowerment is somehow anchored to an alignment solution in some special way?
FTR, I agree with the points made about the chatbot interface being problematic, for the reasons expressed. But my solutional direction would not be soloware, at least not as I understand or am seeing it implemented (i.e. by inviting some ppl to start trying it out more).
My solutional direction might be something I’d call “Sacredware.”
In all likelihood, Sacredware would be designed by a small group of “only-corrigible-to-the-inconceivable” (Bodhi-corrigible) for “Everyone”. This might end up looking like soloware, or something similarly flexible. And yet, it would also need to, at scale, rigorously avoid red queen dynamics, tragedy of the commons, and unnecessary killing of life. It would not be designed to cater to human preferences or comfort, but rather their collective spiritual development and ability to steward life on Earth. (In other words, it constantly affirms or upholds a set of virtues that transcends human societies or particular time&place, without major deviation, while being extremely adaptable for specific time&place.)
It would not be possible to get to Sacredware by starting with the soloware project, as far as I understand it. But that is difficult for me to explain here.

Unreal 9 Oct 2025 18:04 UTC
2 points
0
on: What, if not agency?
(I’m not sure what term would be appropriate to encompass both soloware and groupware.)
fitware?

Unreal 28 Sep 2025 21:08 UTC
23 points
1
on: CFAR update, and New CFAR workshops
I benefited greatly from my CFAR experience, as a participant, a volunteer mentor, and as full-time staff.
The main early benefit was a boost to my self-confidence and agency, the realization that I could endlessly work to resolve my own problems (physical, emotional, and mental) and that there is no end to self-improvement and overcoming one’s own obstacles. I was deeply inspired by CFAR instructors as role models.
As a mentor, I realized I could also help others with their problems, and often this meant getting out of the way and simply acting as a mirror.
As staff, I gained some much-needed common sense and the ability to work with physical objects and places. I learned to merge with tools and the venue itself, in order to do operations. I became better at time (like being on time and learning how long it takes to do things). I learned to value my voice and became more openly disagreeable. And a lot more that I won’t list.
I believe I also gained deep insights and new ways of being that bolstered my path of truth-seeking with CFAR, which then led me to even clearer truth-seeking paths.
If there’s a piece of curriculum that I think would be a helpful addition, it’s how to escape all forms of victim mentality. All the benefit of a place like CFAR seems like it could come crashing down with victim mentality in the water. The “drama triangle” is a helpful framework here.
What links here?
- What’s going on at CFAR? (Updates and Fundraiser) by AnnaSalamon (30 Dec 2025 5:00 UTC; 110 points)

Unreal 18 May 2025 23:54 UTC
−3 points
0
in reply to: dirk’s comment on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
You are speaking from a materialist, consequentialist worldview. I do not buy into this worldview.
It has caused massive suffering and existential crises on the planet and is deeply deluded about what ‘beneficial’ is.

Unreal 18 May 2025 19:49 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Max Entropy’s comment on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
- Any good reading on circling, spiral dynamics, or chakras off the top of your head?
No, none come to mind.
This is like asking about reading how to ride a horse. Find someone who can teach you to ride a horse with real horses, and you’ll learn 100x more, with less error.

Unreal 18 May 2025 19:42 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Max Entropy’s comment on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
- How do you think about impact when going for arahantship, or do you reject the frame? I’d love to do this too but think I could do an (actually) impactful startup
Truly beneficial impact is only possible with Awakening. Everything is still based in delusion until realization, and stream entry is not sufficient.
That does not mean you shouldn’t do anything until then. We can use everything for the path of letting go.
But simply telling yourself you are using everything for the path is not sufficient, and you are probably deceiving yourself in some way. Therefore find a true spiritual teacher, and a good spiritual community, who can keep you on track.
Until then, you are going to be making decisions based on liking and disliking, grasping and avoiding, and none of that really works. It only creates more, bigger problems.
You can check out the Buddhism for AI course online. Might be of interest.

Unreal 18 May 2025 19:38 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Max Entropy’s comment on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
Any chance you could rattle off the next half dozen things that come to mind?
Connection Theory Charting (Leverage Research framework), Core Transformation, Tai Chi / Qi Gong, Bio-Emotive Processing (Doug Tataryn), Shaolin practice (Shi Heng Yi on YouTube), TWIM, Gendlin’s Focusing, Immunity to Change (Kegan process), Improv Theater (see book Impro), Perri Chase (spiritual teacher online).

I haven’t done this one but I hear Alexander Technique is quite powerful. Also heard good things about Landmark.

Unreal 18 May 2025 19:27 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Max Entropy’s comment on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
I’m even considering training at a monastery.
Well if you are seeking, you can try visiting MAPLE for a week or so. Or try the 1-3 month program. It’s not very traditional, but it is a good training system that supports deep practice. If you seek tradition, which has many benefits, I recommend going to Asia.

Unreal 25 Mar 2025 18:15 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: plex’s comment on: A Path out of Insufficient Views
The benefit of fixing on the release/dissolve as a way of being is that it will release/dissolve itself, and that’s what makes it safer than fixing on anything that doesn’t have an ‘expiration date’ as it were.
I think the confusion on this is that
We have this sense that some process is safe or good to fix upon. Because ‘process’ is more change-y than something static.
But even process is not safe to fix upon. You are not a process. We’re not in a process. To say ‘process’ is trying to ‘thing-ify’ or ‘reify’ something that does not have a property called ‘existence’ nor ‘non-existence’. We must escape from the flattening dichotomy of existence and non-existence, which is a nonsense.
A “universe” cannot be fully specified, and I believe our physics has made that clear. But also our idea of ‘universe’ is ridiculously small-minded still. Science has narrowed our vision of what is, and fixated upon it, and now we’re actually more ignorant / deluded than before. Although I also appreciate the beauty of science and math.

Unreal

Ac­cept­ing Death & Adult Responsibility

Accepting Death & Adult Responsibility