By a duality principle, you can learn a lot from losers.
If somebody has made it to a high position of power despite having glaring flaws (you can think of Tate I guess), I recommend you pay attention. They must have something which balances their flaws out, something which made them succeed despite being at a disadvantage. You can figure out what it is and take it for yourself.
If an ugly person, stupid person, or socially awkward person becomes more successful than what makes sense to you, then your map is incomplete, and the advantage of the person might even be a low-hanging fruit (if a stupid person has an advantage, chances are you can emulate it). In fact, anything which has a stupid design, but which darwinism hasn’t yet removed from existence despite many years passing, likely has some trait which gives it a lot of fitness (this might even be true necessarily). The Ocean Sunfish, arguably one of natures failures, apparently lays up to 300 million eggs at a time. This is not really useful despite noticing that for X to exist, X merely has to have a combined quality and quantity above some threshold. This insight is mostly valuable in human beings, like stupid people who have a lot of money, or low EQ people with social success.
I think this insight is valuable enough to share, since it seemingly finds value in what most people regard as worthless, which is much more impressive to me than finding value in what’s valuable. Of course, this is closer to stat-point allocation. 100 traits in a person might sum to “success”, and you’re only aware of 80 of their traits, and none of them impress you. Well, the last 20 traits should sum to a high value, and some of these values are likely higher than your own values (since your own values are likely higher in the other 80 dimensions). So the sum of traits is of some value, and you can take the extremes and raise your own respective dimensions by emulating/stealing/seeking inspiration from the person in question.
It would be quite easy to formalize this mathematically and likely even to prove it, though a few dimensions might have to be “luck” and “advantage at birth” (nepotism).
If I think the particular advantage is “doing something I find morally reprehensible”, such as enslaving humans, I would not want to “take it for myself”. This applies to a large number of possible advantages.
Even then it might be useful to be aware of it, and plan around it. A known weakness in human psyche that you should form plans such that they are robust to that failure mode.
Many of the advantages are like that, but I think it’s a little pessimistic not to dare to look anyway. I’ve personally noticed that people who are on the helpless side are good at making others want to help them, so not all insights are about immoral behaviour. But even then, aren’t you curious how people less capable than yourself can be immoral without getting caught, or immoral in a way which others somehow forgive? Most things which can be used for evil can also be used for good, so I think it’s a shame if you don’t allow yourself to look and analyze (though I understand that things surrounding immorality can be off-putting)
I’m not all that afraid of things surrounding morality, but it’s because trust myself quite a lot, so the borders between good and bad are more clear (the grey area is smaller, it’s more white and black) so I don’t bully myself for just getting sort of close to immorality. I don’t know if you do this yourself, but having steeper gradients has benefited me personally, I feel more mentally sharp after making my own boundaries clear to myself. I’m just sharing this because I think most people could benefit from it (less so LW users than the general population, but there should still be some)
I don’t know about bullying myself, but it’s easy to make myself angry by looking too long at this manner of conceptual space, and that’s not always the most productive thing for me, personally, to be doing too much of. Even if some of the instruments are neutral, they might leave a worse taste in my mouth for the deliberate association with the more negative; in the same way that if I associate a meal with food poisoning, it might be inedible for a long time.
Sometimes I spend a few hours talking with myself, and finding out what I really believe, what I really value, and what I’m for and against. The effect is clearity of mind and a greater trust in myself. A lot of good and bad things have a low distance to eachother, for instance “arrogance” and “confidence”, so without the granularity to differentiate subtle differences, you put yourself at a disadvantage, suspecting even good things.
I suppose another reason that I recommend trusting yourself is that some people, afraid of being misunderstood and judged by others, stay away from anything which can be misunderstood as evil, so they distance themselves from any red flags with a distance of, say, 3 degrees of association.
Having ones associations corrupted because something negative poisons everything without 3 degrees/links of distance has really screwed me over, so I kind of want you to hear me out on this: I might go to the supermarket, and buy a milkshake, but hate the experience because I know the milkshake has a lot of chemicals in it, because I hate the company which makes them, because I hate the advertisement, because I know the text on the bottle is misleading… But wait a minute, the milkshake tastes good, I like it, the hatred is a few associations away. What I did was sabotage my own experience of enjoying the milkshake, because if I didn’t, it would feel like I was supporting something which I hated, merely because something like that existed 2-3 links away in concept space.
I can’t enjoy my bed because I think about dust mites, I can’t enjoy video-games because I think about exploitative skinners boxes, I can’t enjoy pop music because, even though I like the melody, I know that the singer is somewhat talentless and that somebody else wrote the lyrics for them. But, I have some young friends (early 20s) who simply enjoy what they enjoy and hate what they hate, and they do not mix the two. They drink a milkshake and it’s tasty, and they listen to the music and it feels good, and they lay down in their bed and it’s soft and cozy. Aren’t they living in reality and enjoying the moment, while I’m telling my body that my environment is hostile, which probably makes it waste a lot of energy making sure that I don’t enjoy anything (as that would be supporting evil) or let my guard down?
I noticed myself doing this, and stopped this unnecessary spread of negative associations, or reduced the distance at least. Politics seems to be “the mind killer” exactly because people form associations/shortcuts like “sharing → communism → mass starvation → death”, putting them off even good things which “gets too close” to bad things. And these poisoned clusters can get really big, causing heuristics such as “rock music = the devil”. Sorry about the lengthy message by the way.
I think you are working to outline something interesting and useful, that might be a necessary step for carrying out your original post’s suggestion with less risk; especially when the connection is directly there and even what you find yourself analyzing rather than multiple links away.
I think the ideas are independently useful, but to get the best out of both, I’d probably have to submit a big post (rather than these shortform comments) and write some more related insights (I only shared this one because I thought it might be useful to you). Actually, I know that I’m likely too lazy and unconscientious to ever make such a post, and I invite people to plagiarize, refine and formalize my ideas. I’ve probably had a thousand insights like this, and after writing them out, they stop being interesting to me, and I go on thinking about the next thing.
I hope my comment was useful to you, though! You can start applying the concept to areas outside of morality. Of feel how postive experiences have the same effect (I have made many good memories on sunny days, so everything connected to brightness and summer is perceived more positively by me). There’s no need to “fix” good associations blending together, I personally don’t, but I also don’t identify as a rationalist. I’m more of a meta-gamer/power-gamer, like a videogame speedrunner looking for new glitches to exploit (because it’s fun, not because I’m ambitious).
By a duality principle, you can learn a lot from losers.
If somebody has made it to a high position of power despite having glaring flaws (you can think of Tate I guess), I recommend you pay attention. They must have something which balances their flaws out, something which made them succeed despite being at a disadvantage. You can figure out what it is and take it for yourself.
If an ugly person, stupid person, or socially awkward person becomes more successful than what makes sense to you, then your map is incomplete, and the advantage of the person might even be a low-hanging fruit (if a stupid person has an advantage, chances are you can emulate it). In fact, anything which has a stupid design, but which darwinism hasn’t yet removed from existence despite many years passing, likely has some trait which gives it a lot of fitness (this might even be true necessarily). The Ocean Sunfish, arguably one of natures failures, apparently lays up to 300 million eggs at a time. This is not really useful despite noticing that for X to exist, X merely has to have a combined quality and quantity above some threshold. This insight is mostly valuable in human beings, like stupid people who have a lot of money, or low EQ people with social success.
I think this insight is valuable enough to share, since it seemingly finds value in what most people regard as worthless, which is much more impressive to me than finding value in what’s valuable. Of course, this is closer to stat-point allocation. 100 traits in a person might sum to “success”, and you’re only aware of 80 of their traits, and none of them impress you. Well, the last 20 traits should sum to a high value, and some of these values are likely higher than your own values (since your own values are likely higher in the other 80 dimensions). So the sum of traits is of some value, and you can take the extremes and raise your own respective dimensions by emulating/stealing/seeking inspiration from the person in question.
It would be quite easy to formalize this mathematically and likely even to prove it, though a few dimensions might have to be “luck” and “advantage at birth” (nepotism).
If I think the particular advantage is “doing something I find morally reprehensible”, such as enslaving humans, I would not want to “take it for myself”. This applies to a large number of possible advantages.
Even then it might be useful to be aware of it, and plan around it. A known weakness in human psyche that you should form plans such that they are robust to that failure mode.
Many of the advantages are like that, but I think it’s a little pessimistic not to dare to look anyway. I’ve personally noticed that people who are on the helpless side are good at making others want to help them, so not all insights are about immoral behaviour. But even then, aren’t you curious how people less capable than yourself can be immoral without getting caught, or immoral in a way which others somehow forgive? Most things which can be used for evil can also be used for good, so I think it’s a shame if you don’t allow yourself to look and analyze (though I understand that things surrounding immorality can be off-putting)
I’m not all that afraid of things surrounding morality, but it’s because trust myself quite a lot, so the borders between good and bad are more clear (the grey area is smaller, it’s more white and black) so I don’t bully myself for just getting sort of close to immorality. I don’t know if you do this yourself, but having steeper gradients has benefited me personally, I feel more mentally sharp after making my own boundaries clear to myself. I’m just sharing this because I think most people could benefit from it (less so LW users than the general population, but there should still be some)
I don’t know about bullying myself, but it’s easy to make myself angry by looking too long at this manner of conceptual space, and that’s not always the most productive thing for me, personally, to be doing too much of. Even if some of the instruments are neutral, they might leave a worse taste in my mouth for the deliberate association with the more negative; in the same way that if I associate a meal with food poisoning, it might be inedible for a long time.
Sometimes I spend a few hours talking with myself, and finding out what I really believe, what I really value, and what I’m for and against. The effect is clearity of mind and a greater trust in myself. A lot of good and bad things have a low distance to eachother, for instance “arrogance” and “confidence”, so without the granularity to differentiate subtle differences, you put yourself at a disadvantage, suspecting even good things.
I suppose another reason that I recommend trusting yourself is that some people, afraid of being misunderstood and judged by others, stay away from anything which can be misunderstood as evil, so they distance themselves from any red flags with a distance of, say, 3 degrees of association.
Having ones associations corrupted because something negative poisons everything without 3 degrees/links of distance has really screwed me over, so I kind of want you to hear me out on this:
I might go to the supermarket, and buy a milkshake, but hate the experience because I know the milkshake has a lot of chemicals in it, because I hate the company which makes them, because I hate the advertisement, because I know the text on the bottle is misleading… But wait a minute, the milkshake tastes good, I like it, the hatred is a few associations away. What I did was sabotage my own experience of enjoying the milkshake, because if I didn’t, it would feel like I was supporting something which I hated, merely because something like that existed 2-3 links away in concept space.
I can’t enjoy my bed because I think about dust mites, I can’t enjoy video-games because I think about exploitative skinners boxes, I can’t enjoy pop music because, even though I like the melody, I know that the singer is somewhat talentless and that somebody else wrote the lyrics for them. But, I have some young friends (early 20s) who simply enjoy what they enjoy and hate what they hate, and they do not mix the two. They drink a milkshake and it’s tasty, and they listen to the music and it feels good, and they lay down in their bed and it’s soft and cozy. Aren’t they living in reality and enjoying the moment, while I’m telling my body that my environment is hostile, which probably makes it waste a lot of energy making sure that I don’t enjoy anything (as that would be supporting evil) or let my guard down?
I noticed myself doing this, and stopped this unnecessary spread of negative associations, or reduced the distance at least. Politics seems to be “the mind killer” exactly because people form associations/shortcuts like “sharing → communism → mass starvation → death”, putting them off even good things which “gets too close” to bad things. And these poisoned clusters can get really big, causing heuristics such as “rock music = the devil”. Sorry about the lengthy message by the way.
I think you are working to outline something interesting and useful, that might be a necessary step for carrying out your original post’s suggestion with less risk; especially when the connection is directly there and even what you find yourself analyzing rather than multiple links away.
I think the ideas are independently useful, but to get the best out of both, I’d probably have to submit a big post (rather than these shortform comments) and write some more related insights (I only shared this one because I thought it might be useful to you). Actually, I know that I’m likely too lazy and unconscientious to ever make such a post, and I invite people to plagiarize, refine and formalize my ideas. I’ve probably had a thousand insights like this, and after writing them out, they stop being interesting to me, and I go on thinking about the next thing.
I hope my comment was useful to you, though! You can start applying the concept to areas outside of morality. Of feel how postive experiences have the same effect (I have made many good memories on sunny days, so everything connected to brightness and summer is perceived more positively by me). There’s no need to “fix” good associations blending together, I personally don’t, but I also don’t identify as a rationalist. I’m more of a meta-gamer/power-gamer, like a videogame speedrunner looking for new glitches to exploit (because it’s fun, not because I’m ambitious).