Vernor suggested a principle: The bad beings nearly always optimize for engagement, for pulling you ever deeper into their influence. They want to make themselves more firmly a part of your OODA loop. The good ones send you out, away from themselves in an open ended way, but better than before.
Sounds like an interesting talk. Did he ever publish any variant of it? I don’t recall seeing anything like that, but 2009 was 15 years ago so plenty of time.
From a message I wrote to a friend once that seems a little relevant
[H]ow should you act when you’re inside someone’s OODA loop? I was thinking about how like Wikipedia/tab explosions are sort of inside my ooda loop. But sometimes I can be more of an active reader who is navigating the concepts being exposed to me as I choose, and the process becomes like a magic genie or butler who is doing interpretative labour and conjuring up new scenes following my fickle interest.
So it seems like one thing that the person with the smaller loop can do is interpretative labour, and spend the faster cycles on self-legibilising.
After a discussion with a friend, I’m not so sure anymore. Kids enmesh themselves in your OODA loop and I don’t view them as evil. People want to be wanted in romance and in some sense that’s trying to become a part of other’s OODA loops and I don’t view that as evil. Though in the former case, you want them to eventually leave your loop. And in the latter, I hope, lovers’ want their partners’ to become stronger.
I think there’s still something there, but it isn’t as solid a principle as I initially thought.
Yeah, maybe it’s less the OODA loop involvement and more that “bad things” lead to a kind of activated nervous system that predisposes us to reactive behavior (“react” as opposed to “reflect/respond”).
To me, the bad loops are more “stimulus → react without thinking” than “observe, orient, decide, act”. You end up hijacked by your reactive nervous system.
I think I know what you mean. Like the state people fall into when scrolling through TikTok or gambling on slot machines or so forth. I think the term is called “dark flow” in psychology. I feel like that’s just one facet of what you’re pointing out though. Some memes or ideologies can mind-kill you, and I think they should kind-of count as “maximizing engagement”.
“Stimulus->react without thinking” has potential, but I’m not sure where to go from here with it.
That is profound!
Sounds like an interesting talk. Did he ever publish any variant of it? I don’t recall seeing anything like that, but 2009 was 15 years ago so plenty of time.
From a message I wrote to a friend once that seems a little relevant
After a discussion with a friend, I’m not so sure anymore. Kids enmesh themselves in your OODA loop and I don’t view them as evil. People want to be wanted in romance and in some sense that’s trying to become a part of other’s OODA loops and I don’t view that as evil. Though in the former case, you want them to eventually leave your loop. And in the latter, I hope, lovers’ want their partners’ to become stronger.
I think there’s still something there, but it isn’t as solid a principle as I initially thought.
Yeah, maybe it’s less the OODA loop involvement and more that “bad things” lead to a kind of activated nervous system that predisposes us to reactive behavior (“react” as opposed to “reflect/respond”).
To me, the bad loops are more “stimulus → react without thinking” than “observe, orient, decide, act”. You end up hijacked by your reactive nervous system.
I think I know what you mean. Like the state people fall into when scrolling through TikTok or gambling on slot machines or so forth. I think the term is called “dark flow” in psychology. I feel like that’s just one facet of what you’re pointing out though. Some memes or ideologies can mind-kill you, and I think they should kind-of count as “maximizing engagement”.
“Stimulus->react without thinking” has potential, but I’m not sure where to go from here with it.