The way I see it, the difference in motivation comes not from “terminal vs instrumental”, but from how you’re focusing your attention.
This may be true for small subgoals, but I feel it’s difficult for large goals. Consider learning to program. In my experience, it is much easier to become a good programmer if you actually love programming. Even if you successfully choose to focus on programming and manage not to be distracted by your “real” goals, the scheduler acts differently if you’ve decided to program versus if you love programming. The difference is in the details, like how you’ll mentally debug a project you’re working on while riding the bus, or scribble ideas in a notebook while in class, things that the scheduler wouldn’t even consider if you’ve shifted your focus but haven’t actually made programming an end unto itself.
If you can achieve the same level of commitment merely by shifting your focus, more power to you. In my experience, there is an extra boost I get from a task being an end in its own right.
That said, as I mentioned in the post, I seldom use terminal-goal-modification myself. Part of the point of that section was to remind people that even if they don’t personally like goal-hacking, there are games in which the optimal move involves changing your actual terminal goals, for any definition of “terminal goals”.
The problem isn’t that you believe you’re defeat-able. The problem is that you fear failure … Strip away the frames and motivations and look at where the attention is … “I want to succeed. I might not, and if I don’t, it will be truly disappointing. And that’s okay. And even though I might fail, I might not and that would be truly amazing. So I’m going to throw myself at it without looking back”. And my version is better. My version is more stable under assault.
I can see how this may ring true for you, but it does not ring true for me. “Nothing is Beyond My Grasp” has very little do to with fear of failure. I’m glad your particular mantra works for you, but I don’t think it would help me tap into the reserves available in the compartment. In day-to-day life, I have a non-compartmentalized belief that is similar to your mantra, but it’s not related to the compartmentalized belief.
“Nothing is Beyond My Grasp” is useful because it puts me in a frame of mind that is otherwise difficult to access, in which I have additional reserves of motivation. It’s a bit hard to describe in words, but… it’s sort of like context-switching, it’s sort of like a credible precommitment, it’s sort of like stubbornness, and it’s sort of like a word of encouragement from a close friend. It feels kind of like those things. (Describing discontinuous unfounded mental states is hard.)
It’s not that I’m suffering from a “fear of failure” or a “lack of focus”, it’s that there’s set of parameters under which the monkey brain has a particular flavor of performance, and those parameters were baked in long before humans realized how big the world is and how nothing is a certainty. The compartment is sort of like a way to QuickLoad that mental state.
If you can get into that headspace without fooling yourself, more power to you. Personally, I access it via a mental compartment with false beliefs.
This may be true for small subgoals, but I feel it’s difficult for large goals. Consider learning to program. In my experience, it is much easier to become a good programmer if you actually love programming.
That’s the part I agree with.
I’m not a full blown programmer, but I have loved programming to the point of working on it for long stretches and losing sleep because I was too drawn to it to let my mind rest. I still call that kind of thing (and even more serious love for programming) “instrumental”
If you can achieve the same level of commitment merely by shifting your focus, more power to you. In my experience, there is an extra boost I get from a task being an end in its own right.
It’s hard to describe in a single comment, but it’s not the same as just “Hmmm… You make a good point. I guess I should focus on the instrumental goal”. It’s not a conscious decision to willpower some focus. I’m talking about the same process you are when you “switch an instrumental goal to terminal”. It has all the same “qualia” associated with it.
It’s just that I don’t agree with calling “that thing I do because I love doing it” a “terminal goal”
When I look back at the things I have loved doing, they all contributed to more human-general terminal goals. I didn’t always realize this at the time (and at the time I very well might have described it as “terminal”), but in retrospect it all adds up. And when something that I loved doing stopped contributing to the actual terminal goal, I would lose interest.
The only difference is that now I’m more aware of whats going on so it’s easier to notice which things I ought to be interested in “for their own sake”.
“Nothing is Beyond My Grasp” has very little do to with fear of failure.
I don’t think it’s always obvious when something has to do with “fear of failure”. Introspection illusion and all. I’m actually talking about one of the more subtle and harder-to-find flavors of “fear of failure”.
“Nothing is Beyond My Grasp” is useful because it puts me in a frame of mind that is otherwise difficult to access, in which I have additional reserves of motivation. It’s a bit hard to describe in words, but...
Yes, it’s absolutely about the frame of mind that it puts you in, and it’s difficult to describe in words. The words aren’t doing the heavy lifting, and the feelings just don’t translate that well to english. I don’t even have a “mantra”—I have a mindset that is hard to convey but those words seem to point in roughly the right direction. It definitely includes ferocious stubbornness and feels like I’m being cheered on.
And I certainly don’t expect my words to get you there right off the bat.
If you can get into that headspace without fooling yourself, more power to you. Personally, I access it via a mental compartment with false beliefs.
And if that’s how you know how to do it, then by all means keep making use of it.
I just think you should open your mind to alternatives in the mean time. Your argument seems to be “we are godshatter, therefore no clean solution exists, therefore we should not bother looking for a clean solution when thinking about how to use our brain”. My response is “yeah kinda, I can see why you’d suspect this, but there’s no way you should be certain enough of that to not keep your eyes open for a clean solution.” and “BTW, I claim to have a clean solution and while I can’t hand it to you on a silver platter, I can wave my hands in the general direction. The clean solution comes with goodies like better “hacks”, more frequent and better aimed use, and an idea of the direction of progress”
And I have to emphasize that I do mean “open your mind to that alternative” not “take that alternative” because it’s not possible to pick up a whole new worldview over a LW comment. I’m not looking for a “Oh! He’s totally right!”. I’m looking for a “Hmmm.....”
Here’s an excellent essay from another LWer on the same sort of perspective about how So8res-”terminal”/jimmy-”instrumental” goals are chosen instrumentally as part of finding your niche.
It’s just that I don’t agree with calling “that thing I do because I love doing it” a “terminal goal”
That’s fine. I think we generally agree and are debating terminology. The phrase seems rather dichotomous. I acknowledged the dichotomy in the post and tried to make my intended meaning explicit (see the “Mind the terminology” section), but I’m not too surprised that there’s a communicational gap here.
Your argument seems to be “we are godshatter, therefore no clean solution exists
I think you’re reading more into my post than is there.
therefore we should not bother looking for a clean solution when thinking about how to use our brain
I disapprove of this interpretation of my argument. If the aesthetics of my solutions do not appeal to you, then by all means, search for “cleaner” solutions. I don’t know where you got the impression that I’m closed to your suggestions.
First of all, I’m sorry if anything I said came off as confrontational. I like the post, think it makes important points, and I upvoted it. :)
That’s fine. I think we generally agree and are debating terminology. The phrase seems rather dichotomous. I acknowledged the dichotomy in the post and tried to make my intended meaning explicit (see the “Mind the terminology” section), but I’m not too surprised that there’s a communicational gap here.
I agree that we generally agree and are debating terminology. I also agree that you are aware of what you mean when you say “terminal”.
I also think that the differing terminology and associated framing leads to important higher order differences. Do you disagree?
I think you’re reading more into my post than is there.
Guilty as charged. My disagreement is only with 1) (what appeared to me to be) the underlying frame and 2) specific actionable differences that result from the different frames
Since the pieces of the underlying frame that I disagree with are unspoken and you haven’t taken a stance on the specific differences, I can’t make my point without reading more into the post than is explicitly there. What is your take on the “do the same thing without Dark” approach?
I don’t know where you got the impression that I’m closed to your suggestions.
I don’t actually think you’re closed to my suggestions. No accusations of irrationality here—sorry if it came across otherwise!
I just meant that I think it is very valuable and easily worth a spot on your radar
No problem. I’m also aiming for a non-confrontational tone, that’s sometimes difficult in text.
I also think that the differing terminology and associated framing leads to important higher order differences. Do you disagree?
I don’t know. I haven’t pinpointed the higher order differences that you’re trying to articulate.
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.
What is your take on the “do the same thing without Dark” approach?
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.
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.
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.
To each their own.
This may be true for small subgoals, but I feel it’s difficult for large goals. Consider learning to program. In my experience, it is much easier to become a good programmer if you actually love programming. Even if you successfully choose to focus on programming and manage not to be distracted by your “real” goals, the scheduler acts differently if you’ve decided to program versus if you love programming. The difference is in the details, like how you’ll mentally debug a project you’re working on while riding the bus, or scribble ideas in a notebook while in class, things that the scheduler wouldn’t even consider if you’ve shifted your focus but haven’t actually made programming an end unto itself.
If you can achieve the same level of commitment merely by shifting your focus, more power to you. In my experience, there is an extra boost I get from a task being an end in its own right.
That said, as I mentioned in the post, I seldom use terminal-goal-modification myself. Part of the point of that section was to remind people that even if they don’t personally like goal-hacking, there are games in which the optimal move involves changing your actual terminal goals, for any definition of “terminal goals”.
I can see how this may ring true for you, but it does not ring true for me. “Nothing is Beyond My Grasp” has very little do to with fear of failure. I’m glad your particular mantra works for you, but I don’t think it would help me tap into the reserves available in the compartment. In day-to-day life, I have a non-compartmentalized belief that is similar to your mantra, but it’s not related to the compartmentalized belief.
“Nothing is Beyond My Grasp” is useful because it puts me in a frame of mind that is otherwise difficult to access, in which I have additional reserves of motivation. It’s a bit hard to describe in words, but… it’s sort of like context-switching, it’s sort of like a credible precommitment, it’s sort of like stubbornness, and it’s sort of like a word of encouragement from a close friend. It feels kind of like those things. (Describing discontinuous unfounded mental states is hard.)
It’s not that I’m suffering from a “fear of failure” or a “lack of focus”, it’s that there’s set of parameters under which the monkey brain has a particular flavor of performance, and those parameters were baked in long before humans realized how big the world is and how nothing is a certainty. The compartment is sort of like a way to QuickLoad that mental state.
If you can get into that headspace without fooling yourself, more power to you. Personally, I access it via a mental compartment with false beliefs.
That’s the part I agree with.
I’m not a full blown programmer, but I have loved programming to the point of working on it for long stretches and losing sleep because I was too drawn to it to let my mind rest. I still call that kind of thing (and even more serious love for programming) “instrumental”
It’s hard to describe in a single comment, but it’s not the same as just “Hmmm… You make a good point. I guess I should focus on the instrumental goal”. It’s not a conscious decision to willpower some focus. I’m talking about the same process you are when you “switch an instrumental goal to terminal”. It has all the same “qualia” associated with it.
It’s just that I don’t agree with calling “that thing I do because I love doing it” a “terminal goal”
When I look back at the things I have loved doing, they all contributed to more human-general terminal goals. I didn’t always realize this at the time (and at the time I very well might have described it as “terminal”), but in retrospect it all adds up. And when something that I loved doing stopped contributing to the actual terminal goal, I would lose interest. The only difference is that now I’m more aware of whats going on so it’s easier to notice which things I ought to be interested in “for their own sake”.
I don’t think it’s always obvious when something has to do with “fear of failure”. Introspection illusion and all. I’m actually talking about one of the more subtle and harder-to-find flavors of “fear of failure”.
Yes, it’s absolutely about the frame of mind that it puts you in, and it’s difficult to describe in words. The words aren’t doing the heavy lifting, and the feelings just don’t translate that well to english. I don’t even have a “mantra”—I have a mindset that is hard to convey but those words seem to point in roughly the right direction. It definitely includes ferocious stubbornness and feels like I’m being cheered on.
And I certainly don’t expect my words to get you there right off the bat.
And if that’s how you know how to do it, then by all means keep making use of it.
I just think you should open your mind to alternatives in the mean time. Your argument seems to be “we are godshatter, therefore no clean solution exists, therefore we should not bother looking for a clean solution when thinking about how to use our brain”. My response is “yeah kinda, I can see why you’d suspect this, but there’s no way you should be certain enough of that to not keep your eyes open for a clean solution.” and “BTW, I claim to have a clean solution and while I can’t hand it to you on a silver platter, I can wave my hands in the general direction. The clean solution comes with goodies like better “hacks”, more frequent and better aimed use, and an idea of the direction of progress”
And I have to emphasize that I do mean “open your mind to that alternative” not “take that alternative” because it’s not possible to pick up a whole new worldview over a LW comment. I’m not looking for a “Oh! He’s totally right!”. I’m looking for a “Hmmm.....”
Here’s an excellent essay from another LWer on the same sort of perspective about how So8res-”terminal”/jimmy-”instrumental” goals are chosen instrumentally as part of finding your niche.
That’s fine. I think we generally agree and are debating terminology. The phrase seems rather dichotomous. I acknowledged the dichotomy in the post and tried to make my intended meaning explicit (see the “Mind the terminology” section), but I’m not too surprised that there’s a communicational gap here.
I think you’re reading more into my post than is there.
I disapprove of this interpretation of my argument. If the aesthetics of my solutions do not appeal to you, then by all means, search for “cleaner” solutions. I don’t know where you got the impression that I’m closed to your suggestions.
First of all, I’m sorry if anything I said came off as confrontational. I like the post, think it makes important points, and I upvoted it. :)
I agree that we generally agree and are debating terminology. I also agree that you are aware of what you mean when you say “terminal”.
I also think that the differing terminology and associated framing leads to important higher order differences. Do you disagree?
Guilty as charged. My disagreement is only with 1) (what appeared to me to be) the underlying frame and 2) specific actionable differences that result from the different frames
Since the pieces of the underlying frame that I disagree with are unspoken and you haven’t taken a stance on the specific differences, I can’t make my point without reading more into the post than is explicitly there. What is your take on the “do the same thing without Dark” approach?
I don’t actually think you’re closed to my suggestions. No accusations of irrationality here—sorry if it came across otherwise!
I just meant that I think it is very valuable and easily worth a spot on your radar
No problem. I’m also aiming for a non-confrontational tone, that’s sometimes difficult in text.
I don’t know. I haven’t pinpointed the higher order differences that you’re trying to articulate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Without involving Omega-like agents? In a realistic setting?