I do stand by my point that regardless of your definition of “terminal goal”, I can construct a game in which the optimal move is to change them. I readily admit that under certain definitions of “terminal goal” such games are uncommon.
Agreed.
If it’s the branding that’s annoying you, see this comment—it seems my idea of what qualifies as “dark arts” may differ from the consensus.
Although you do explicitly define “dark arts” differently, that doesn’t really change my issues with the branding. I hope the next part of the comment will explain why (well, that and the objections other people have raised)
I don’t know. I haven’t pinpointed the higher order differences that you’re trying to articulate.[...]I’m not entirely sure what you mean by getting the same effects without the “darkness”. I am quite confident that there are mental states you can only access via first-order self deception, and that it is instrumentally rational to do so. Michael Bloom provides another crisp example of this. I am skeptical that there are ways to attain these gains without self-deception.
That link goes to your previous comment instead of the Michael Blume example. Perhaps you mean his othello role?
I don’t think he did anything sketchy there. Since the explicit goal is to pretend to be someone he’s not in a well defined context, this is a fairly perverse game which makes it nice and easy to cleanly compartmentalize. In fact, everything said in character could be prefaced with “Lago would say” and it wouldn’t even be lying. I’d put this one in the “not really lying because every part of him knows what he’s doing” category. There isn’t a resisting “but it’s not real!” because that’s kinda the point. While it’s obviously an actual situation he was in, I think most cases aren’t this easy.
The other application he mentioned (acting confident for picking up an attractive woman) is more representative of the typical case and more tricky to do right. Say you read a couple posts on LW about how it’s okay to deceive the parts of your monkey brain that are getting in your way—and confidence with women is explicitly mentioned as a good time to do it. So you self deceive to think that you’re super attractive and what not without thinking too much about the risks.
Now, what if “confidence” isn’t your only problem? If you were lacking social intelligence/skills before, you’re still lacking them when you’re playing “confident man”—only now you’re going to ignore the rational uncertainty over how a certain social move will be received. This means you end up doing things that are socially miscalibrated and you end up being the creepy guy. And since “I’m creeping this girl out” is incongruent with “I’m the attractive guy that all women want”, you either keep plowing ahead or dismiss the rejection as “her loss!”. Either way your behavior is not good, and furthermore you’re giving up the chance to analyze your feedback and actually develop your social skills.
And of course, that would be stupid. People like MBlume know better than to disappear down this rabbit hole. But plenty of people actually do fall down that hole (hence the stink around “PUA”)
It doesn’t have to be that blatant though. Even if you know to snap out of it and analyze the feedback when you get a “back off creep”, there are going to be more subtle signs that you don’t pick up on because you’re playing confident—heck, there are plenty of subtle signs that people miss just because they’re subtle. I’ve seen a therapist miss these signs badly and go on to advertise the demo on youtube as a successful provocative therapy session—and this is a guy who trains people in provocative therapy! I don’t want to make it any harder for myself to notice when I’m screwing up.
To give a real life example that actually happened to me/someone I know, I taught self hypnosis to a friend and she ended up spraining her ankle. Since she doesn’t have the heuristic to be very very cautious with dark arts, she used self hypnosis to numb the pain. I consider that to be equivalent to compartmentalizing the belief “My ankle isn’t sprained!” because the end state is the same. Once it didn’t hurt anymore, she brilliantly decided to keep running on it… aaaand she ended up regretting that decision.
Since I do have the heuristic to be very very hesitant to use dark arts, when I sprained my foot… okay, to be honest, I kept running on it too because I’m a stubborn idiot, but I did it despite the pain and if it hurt more I would have stopped. When I decided to do something about the pain I was in, I wanted to take the “clean” and “not dark” approach, so I did my thing where I (again, to give crude and insufficient english pointers) “listen to what the pain has to say”. It completely got rid of the suffering (I could still feel the pain sensations, but it wasn’t bothersome in the least and didn’t demand attention. Quite trippy actually)
But the method I used comes with some caveats. The pain said “Are you sure you weren’t doing something you shouldn’t have been?”, and after thinking about it I was able to to decide that I wasn’t. The pain wanted to make sure I took care of myself, and once I agreed to that, there was no more reason to suffer. It wouldn’t have worked if I had tried to avoid realizing that I shouldn’t have been taking that risk in the first place. It would cease to work the minute I try running on it again. These are nice features :)
The basic idea behind the cleaner way is that all your fears and motivations and the like are the result of nonverbal implicit beliefs. These implicit beliefs may or may not agree with your explicit beliefs, and you may or may not be aware of them. (Empirically, they often have useful information that your explicit beliefs don’t, btw). So what you do is to find out where your implicit beliefs are causing issues, what the beliefs actually say, and if they’re right or not. If they’re right, figure out what you want to do about it. If they’re wrong, change them. This is basically coherence therapy
If you were to take a clean approach in the “confidence with women” situation, you’d probably find that some things you were too afraid to do you probably shouldn’t be doing while others are easily worth the risk. Fear in the former category feels right—like a fear of picking a fight with mike tyson—you just don’t do it and everything is cool. In the latter category it’ll turn to excitement (which you can change cleanly if it’s an issue). Since you’re aware that it might not go well and you’ve accepted that possibility, you don’t have to fear it. Awareness without fear allows you to look hard for things you’re doing wrong without coming off as “not confident”.
The other downside of the dark approach is that if you have incomplete compartmentalization (which can be good to avoid the first problem), you can have this nagging “but I’m lying to myself!” thought which can be distracting. And if reality smacks you in the face, you’re forced to drop your lie and you’re stuck with the maladaptive behaviors you were trying to avoid. When done cleanly you’re already prepared for things to go poorly so you can respond effectively.
That link goes to your previous comment instead of the Michael Blume example. Perhaps you mean his othello role?
Fixed, thanks.
I must admit that I’m somewhat confused, here. I make no claims that the described practices are safe, and in fact I make a number of explicit disclaimers stating that they are not safe. It is dangerous to be half a rationalist, and I readily admit that these tools will bite you hard if you misuse them. This, in fact, is something that I assumed was captured by the “Dark Arts” label. I continue to be baffled by how some people complain about the label, others complain about the danger, and still others complain about both at once.
I completely agree that you shouldn’t go around compartmentalizing at every opportunity, and that you should have a deep understanding of the problem at hand before doing any So8res!DarkArts. Prefer other methods, where possible.
I get the impression that my mental model of when self-deception is optimal differs from your own. I don’t currently have time to try to converge these models right now, but suffice to say that your arguments are not addressing the divergence point.
Regardless, I think we can both agree that self-deception is optimal sometimes, under controlled scenarios in which the agent has a strong understanding of the situation. I think we also agree that such things are dangerous and should be approached with care. All this, I tried to capture with the “Dark Arts” label—I am sorry if that did not make it across the communication gap.
I make no claims that the described practices are safe, and in fact I make a number of explicit disclaimers stating that they are not safe.
I don’t mean to imply that we disagree or that you didn’t put a big enough disclaimer.
I was trying to highlight what the differences were between what happens when you allow yourself to use the “sometimes Dark Arts is the way to go” frame over the “Instead of using Dark Arts, I will study them until I can separate the active ingredient from the Dark” frame, and one of the big ones is the dangers of Dark Arts.
I get the impression that my mental model of when self-deception is optimal differs from your own. I don’t currently have time to try to converge these models right now, but suffice to say that your arguments are not addressing my model the divergence point.
Fair enough
Regardless, I think we can both agree that self-deception is optimal sometimes, under controlled scenarios in which the agent has a strong understanding of the situation. I think we also agree that such things are dangerous and should be approached with care
I’ll agree with that in a weak sense, but not in stronger senses.
I’ve never recognised a more effective psychonaut than you. You’ve probably seen further than I, so I’d appreciate your opinion on a hypo I’ve been nursing.
You see the way pain reacts to your thoughts. If you respect its qualia, find a way to embrace them, that big semi-cognisant iceberg of You, the Subconscious, will take notice, and it will get out of your way, afford you a little more self control, a little less carrot and stick, a little less confusion, a little closer to the some rarely attained level of adulthood.
I suspect that every part of the subconscious can be made to yield in the same way. I think introspective gains are self-accelerating, you don’t just get insights and articulations, you get general introspection skills. I seem to have lost hold of it for now, but I once had what seemed to be an ability to take any vague emotional percept and unravel it into an effective semantic ordinance. It was awesome. I wish I’d been more opportunistic with it.
I get the impression you don’t share my enthusiasm for the prospect of developing a culture supportive of deep subconscious integration, or illumination or whatever you want to call it. What have you seen? Found a hard developmental limit? Or, this is fairly cryptic, do tell me if this makes no sense, but are you hostile to the idea of letting your shadow take you by the hand and ferry you over the is-aught divide? I suspect that the place it would take you is not so bad. I think any alternative you might claim to have is bound to turn out to be nothing but a twisted reflection of its territories.
Agreed.
Although you do explicitly define “dark arts” differently, that doesn’t really change my issues with the branding. I hope the next part of the comment will explain why (well, that and the objections other people have raised)
That link goes to your previous comment instead of the Michael Blume example. Perhaps you mean his othello role?
I don’t think he did anything sketchy there. Since the explicit goal is to pretend to be someone he’s not in a well defined context, this is a fairly perverse game which makes it nice and easy to cleanly compartmentalize. In fact, everything said in character could be prefaced with “Lago would say” and it wouldn’t even be lying. I’d put this one in the “not really lying because every part of him knows what he’s doing” category. There isn’t a resisting “but it’s not real!” because that’s kinda the point. While it’s obviously an actual situation he was in, I think most cases aren’t this easy.
The other application he mentioned (acting confident for picking up an attractive woman) is more representative of the typical case and more tricky to do right. Say you read a couple posts on LW about how it’s okay to deceive the parts of your monkey brain that are getting in your way—and confidence with women is explicitly mentioned as a good time to do it. So you self deceive to think that you’re super attractive and what not without thinking too much about the risks.
Now, what if “confidence” isn’t your only problem? If you were lacking social intelligence/skills before, you’re still lacking them when you’re playing “confident man”—only now you’re going to ignore the rational uncertainty over how a certain social move will be received. This means you end up doing things that are socially miscalibrated and you end up being the creepy guy. And since “I’m creeping this girl out” is incongruent with “I’m the attractive guy that all women want”, you either keep plowing ahead or dismiss the rejection as “her loss!”. Either way your behavior is not good, and furthermore you’re giving up the chance to analyze your feedback and actually develop your social skills.
And of course, that would be stupid. People like MBlume know better than to disappear down this rabbit hole. But plenty of people actually do fall down that hole (hence the stink around “PUA”)
It doesn’t have to be that blatant though. Even if you know to snap out of it and analyze the feedback when you get a “back off creep”, there are going to be more subtle signs that you don’t pick up on because you’re playing confident—heck, there are plenty of subtle signs that people miss just because they’re subtle. I’ve seen a therapist miss these signs badly and go on to advertise the demo on youtube as a successful provocative therapy session—and this is a guy who trains people in provocative therapy! I don’t want to make it any harder for myself to notice when I’m screwing up.
To give a real life example that actually happened to me/someone I know, I taught self hypnosis to a friend and she ended up spraining her ankle. Since she doesn’t have the heuristic to be very very cautious with dark arts, she used self hypnosis to numb the pain. I consider that to be equivalent to compartmentalizing the belief “My ankle isn’t sprained!” because the end state is the same. Once it didn’t hurt anymore, she brilliantly decided to keep running on it… aaaand she ended up regretting that decision.
Since I do have the heuristic to be very very hesitant to use dark arts, when I sprained my foot… okay, to be honest, I kept running on it too because I’m a stubborn idiot, but I did it despite the pain and if it hurt more I would have stopped. When I decided to do something about the pain I was in, I wanted to take the “clean” and “not dark” approach, so I did my thing where I (again, to give crude and insufficient english pointers) “listen to what the pain has to say”. It completely got rid of the suffering (I could still feel the pain sensations, but it wasn’t bothersome in the least and didn’t demand attention. Quite trippy actually)
But the method I used comes with some caveats. The pain said “Are you sure you weren’t doing something you shouldn’t have been?”, and after thinking about it I was able to to decide that I wasn’t. The pain wanted to make sure I took care of myself, and once I agreed to that, there was no more reason to suffer. It wouldn’t have worked if I had tried to avoid realizing that I shouldn’t have been taking that risk in the first place. It would cease to work the minute I try running on it again. These are nice features :)
The basic idea behind the cleaner way is that all your fears and motivations and the like are the result of nonverbal implicit beliefs. These implicit beliefs may or may not agree with your explicit beliefs, and you may or may not be aware of them. (Empirically, they often have useful information that your explicit beliefs don’t, btw). So what you do is to find out where your implicit beliefs are causing issues, what the beliefs actually say, and if they’re right or not. If they’re right, figure out what you want to do about it. If they’re wrong, change them. This is basically coherence therapy
If you were to take a clean approach in the “confidence with women” situation, you’d probably find that some things you were too afraid to do you probably shouldn’t be doing while others are easily worth the risk. Fear in the former category feels right—like a fear of picking a fight with mike tyson—you just don’t do it and everything is cool. In the latter category it’ll turn to excitement (which you can change cleanly if it’s an issue). Since you’re aware that it might not go well and you’ve accepted that possibility, you don’t have to fear it. Awareness without fear allows you to look hard for things you’re doing wrong without coming off as “not confident”.
The other downside of the dark approach is that if you have incomplete compartmentalization (which can be good to avoid the first problem), you can have this nagging “but I’m lying to myself!” thought which can be distracting. And if reality smacks you in the face, you’re forced to drop your lie and you’re stuck with the maladaptive behaviors you were trying to avoid. When done cleanly you’re already prepared for things to go poorly so you can respond effectively.
Fixed, thanks.
I must admit that I’m somewhat confused, here. I make no claims that the described practices are safe, and in fact I make a number of explicit disclaimers stating that they are not safe. It is dangerous to be half a rationalist, and I readily admit that these tools will bite you hard if you misuse them. This, in fact, is something that I assumed was captured by the “Dark Arts” label. I continue to be baffled by how some people complain about the label, others complain about the danger, and still others complain about both at once.
I completely agree that you shouldn’t go around compartmentalizing at every opportunity, and that you should have a deep understanding of the problem at hand before doing any So8res!DarkArts. Prefer other methods, where possible.
I get the impression that my mental model of when self-deception is optimal differs from your own. I don’t currently have time to try to converge these models right now, but suffice to say that your arguments are not addressing the divergence point.
Regardless, I think we can both agree that self-deception is optimal sometimes, under controlled scenarios in which the agent has a strong understanding of the situation. I think we also agree that such things are dangerous and should be approached with care. All this, I tried to capture with the “Dark Arts” label—I am sorry if that did not make it across the communication gap.
I don’t mean to imply that we disagree or that you didn’t put a big enough disclaimer.
I was trying to highlight what the differences were between what happens when you allow yourself to use the “sometimes Dark Arts is the way to go” frame over the “Instead of using Dark Arts, I will study them until I can separate the active ingredient from the Dark” frame, and one of the big ones is the dangers of Dark Arts.
:) “active ingredients aren’t dark”+”inactive ingredients are”
Fair enough
I’ll agree with that in a weak sense, but not in stronger senses.
I’ve never recognised a more effective psychonaut than you. You’ve probably seen further than I, so I’d appreciate your opinion on a hypo I’ve been nursing.
You see the way pain reacts to your thoughts. If you respect its qualia, find a way to embrace them, that big semi-cognisant iceberg of You, the Subconscious, will take notice, and it will get out of your way, afford you a little more self control, a little less carrot and stick, a little less confusion, a little closer to the some rarely attained level of adulthood.
I suspect that every part of the subconscious can be made to yield in the same way. I think introspective gains are self-accelerating, you don’t just get insights and articulations, you get general introspection skills. I seem to have lost hold of it for now, but I once had what seemed to be an ability to take any vague emotional percept and unravel it into an effective semantic ordinance. It was awesome. I wish I’d been more opportunistic with it.
I get the impression you don’t share my enthusiasm for the prospect of developing a culture supportive of deep subconscious integration, or illumination or whatever you want to call it. What have you seen? Found a hard developmental limit? Or, this is fairly cryptic, do tell me if this makes no sense, but are you hostile to the idea of letting your shadow take you by the hand and ferry you over the is-aught divide? I suspect that the place it would take you is not so bad. I think any alternative you might claim to have is bound to turn out to be nothing but a twisted reflection of its territories.