And frankly, looking at the world that way, I think I’d rather be dead than continue to perform in this environment. So all my attempts at “motivation” and “effort” get tainted by that evaluation.
A certain kind of personal trap has been laid out and described, quite well. There is a set of ideas or “takes” on reality that have been accepted as real, but ideas and takes are never real. The error is widespread and normal, even encouraged, but when the content goes awry, the results can be devastating.
The key in the above statement is “this environment.” There is no “this environment.” As Buckaroo Banzai said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Any environment contains ample evidence to support almost any interpretation, and our ability as human beings to invent interpretations is vast, so everywhere we look, we can find what we have believed.
We may imagine that the goal is to invent interpretations that are “true.” But interpretations are neither true nor false. The problem with the value-laden interpretations being invented here is the effects they cause. There are useful interpretations, that empower us, and ones that don’t.
There are two kinds of interpretations. The first, and fundamental kind, is predictive, it takes raw sensory data and predicts what is coming next. That’s not the problematic kind, though if we get stuck in an inefficient predictive mode, believing our predictions are “true,” confirmation bias can still strike. Still, this kind of interpretation can be readily tested.
The problem is in the second kind of interpretation, the division into good and bad, sane and insane, and hosts of these higher-level interpretations. They are much further from reality than the first kind of interpretation, and it is far more difficult to test them. How do we test if the world (“this environment”) is actually good or evil, friendly or hostile?
We are continually creating our world, but we imagine that we are only discovering it. So we are easily victims of “how it is.” Yet we make up “how it is”! That’s a judgment, it is actually a choice.
We imagine that we are constrained in our choices by our identity, but the identity does not exist. That’s ancient rationality. the self is an illusion. Let’s put it this way: if it comes from causation from the past, that’s not a choice, it’s just a machine.
Is there anything other than the machine? You have a choice in how to answer this question! One of the choices is “No.” That, then, will create you—and continue to create you—as a victim of the past, while at the same time, if you are normal, you still think that you are “real.” That’s actually inconsistent.
Far be it from me to confine anyone to only two choices, but there is at least another choice. “Yes,” there is something else, which can be experienced. But it is not a “thing” other than the machine. We are machines, but what we don’t know is the capacity of the machine. It may be that the machine can do things we never dreamed of.
Including, by the way, connecting with other people so that we are no longer limited by individual identity. Doing this may take training, it is not necessarily automatic for all of us, and especially not for those of us who were asocially intelligent. (Like me, for example.)
It’s highly likely that our friend here has experienced situations like what he describes, and being caught in a belief that this defines his future is obviously painful. But what do those situations have to do with today and tomorrow, unless he keeps recreating them?
ialdabaoth, I hope you won’t give up. I don’t think you need to learn something new, exactly, you need to unlearn stuff that you have accepted routinely, and for a long time. Rather than MoreRight, you need to be LessWrong. See what remains when you start dropping stuff that maintains the trap, that doesn’t help you.
You will continue to think the thoughts that you thought, but you don’t have to believe them. The ancient technique is to identify them as what they are, made-up interpretations, chatter, coming from the past. Some will be useful, so use them. Many will be other than that. Keep your eyes open, you will know the difference. Test ideas, don’t imagine that they are truth. They are tools.
A certain kind of personal trap has been laid out and described, quite well. There is a set of ideas or “takes” on reality that have been accepted as real, but ideas and takes are never real. The error is widespread and normal, even encouraged, but when the content goes awry, the results can be devastating.
The key in the above statement is “this environment.” There is no “this environment.” As Buckaroo Banzai said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Any environment contains ample evidence to support almost any interpretation, and our ability as human beings to invent interpretations is vast, so everywhere we look, we can find what we have believed.
We may imagine that the goal is to invent interpretations that are “true.” But interpretations are neither true nor false. The problem with the value-laden interpretations being invented here is the effects they cause. There are useful interpretations, that empower us, and ones that don’t.
There are two kinds of interpretations. The first, and fundamental kind, is predictive, it takes raw sensory data and predicts what is coming next. That’s not the problematic kind, though if we get stuck in an inefficient predictive mode, believing our predictions are “true,” confirmation bias can still strike. Still, this kind of interpretation can be readily tested.
The problem is in the second kind of interpretation, the division into good and bad, sane and insane, and hosts of these higher-level interpretations. They are much further from reality than the first kind of interpretation, and it is far more difficult to test them. How do we test if the world (“this environment”) is actually good or evil, friendly or hostile?
We are continually creating our world, but we imagine that we are only discovering it. So we are easily victims of “how it is.” Yet we make up “how it is”! That’s a judgment, it is actually a choice.
We imagine that we are constrained in our choices by our identity, but the identity does not exist. That’s ancient rationality. the self is an illusion. Let’s put it this way: if it comes from causation from the past, that’s not a choice, it’s just a machine.
Is there anything other than the machine? You have a choice in how to answer this question! One of the choices is “No.” That, then, will create you—and continue to create you—as a victim of the past, while at the same time, if you are normal, you still think that you are “real.” That’s actually inconsistent.
Far be it from me to confine anyone to only two choices, but there is at least another choice. “Yes,” there is something else, which can be experienced. But it is not a “thing” other than the machine. We are machines, but what we don’t know is the capacity of the machine. It may be that the machine can do things we never dreamed of.
Including, by the way, connecting with other people so that we are no longer limited by individual identity. Doing this may take training, it is not necessarily automatic for all of us, and especially not for those of us who were asocially intelligent. (Like me, for example.)
It’s highly likely that our friend here has experienced situations like what he describes, and being caught in a belief that this defines his future is obviously painful. But what do those situations have to do with today and tomorrow, unless he keeps recreating them?
ialdabaoth, I hope you won’t give up. I don’t think you need to learn something new, exactly, you need to unlearn stuff that you have accepted routinely, and for a long time. Rather than MoreRight, you need to be LessWrong. See what remains when you start dropping stuff that maintains the trap, that doesn’t help you.
You will continue to think the thoughts that you thought, but you don’t have to believe them. The ancient technique is to identify them as what they are, made-up interpretations, chatter, coming from the past. Some will be useful, so use them. Many will be other than that. Keep your eyes open, you will know the difference. Test ideas, don’t imagine that they are truth. They are tools.