Okay. I’m not sure what to tell you. This lands for me like “I don’t understand how you think turning on the burner is related to the process of cooking the soup.” Um… it just is? I already described the mechanisms, so I think the communication gap is somewhere I don’t see.
I think you interpreted this as incredulity, whereas I meant it as “I don’t understand the specific links” (e.g. is recognizing the illusion most of the work, or only a small part? What stops you from healing traumas without recognizing the illusion? etc). I’ve edited to clarify.
Oh, no, I didn’t take it as incredulity at all. I’m just honestly not sure why what I’d already said didn’t already explain the relationship between trauma healing and seeing through the illusion.
I guess I can just say it again in shortened form?
For the person design I’m talking about…
There’s a pain inside.
There’s also a kind of mental/emotional program built around the instruction “Distract from the pain.”
Because they can’t actually escape the pain, they project it outward through the mind. Which is to say, they create an illusion powered by the pain.
This causes them to think every glimmer of the pain they do notice is about the external thing.
The antidote is to look directly at the inner pain & dismantle the “Distract from the pain” program.
In practice this requires integrating the pain into consciousness. This is one way of talking about “healing trauma”.
Once that happens, the program doesn’t have a power source anymore.
If that doesn’t happen and the person insists on focusing on doing things in the world, everything they do will be at least partly in service to distraction rather than solving any real problem.
And on the inside they cannot tell the difference between those two without facing the inner pain.
So seeing through the illusion isn’t cognitive basically at all. To me it’s the same thing as trauma processing, for all practical purposes.
Does that clarify anything for you?
What stops you from healing traumas without recognizing the illusion?
Oh, nothing. If you just go around healing traumas willy-nilly, then you might not ever see through any particular illusion like this one if it’s running in you.
Kind of like, generically working on trauma processing in general might or might not help an alcoholic quit drinking. There’s some reason for hope, but it’s possible to get lost in loops of navel-gazing, especially if they never ever even admit to themselves that they have a problem.
But if it’s targeted, the addiction basically doesn’t stand a chance.
I’m not trying to say “Just work on traumas and be Fully Healed™ before working on AI risk.”
I think you interpreted this as incredulity, whereas I meant it as “I don’t understand the specific links” (e.g. is recognizing the illusion most of the work, or only a small part? What stops you from healing traumas without recognizing the illusion? etc). I’ve edited to clarify.
Oh, no, I didn’t take it as incredulity at all. I’m just honestly not sure why what I’d already said didn’t already explain the relationship between trauma healing and seeing through the illusion.
I guess I can just say it again in shortened form?
For the person design I’m talking about…
There’s a pain inside.
There’s also a kind of mental/emotional program built around the instruction “Distract from the pain.”
Because they can’t actually escape the pain, they project it outward through the mind. Which is to say, they create an illusion powered by the pain.
This causes them to think every glimmer of the pain they do notice is about the external thing.
The antidote is to look directly at the inner pain & dismantle the “Distract from the pain” program.
In practice this requires integrating the pain into consciousness. This is one way of talking about “healing trauma”.
Once that happens, the program doesn’t have a power source anymore.
If that doesn’t happen and the person insists on focusing on doing things in the world, everything they do will be at least partly in service to distraction rather than solving any real problem.
And on the inside they cannot tell the difference between those two without facing the inner pain.
So seeing through the illusion isn’t cognitive basically at all. To me it’s the same thing as trauma processing, for all practical purposes.
Does that clarify anything for you?
Oh, nothing. If you just go around healing traumas willy-nilly, then you might not ever see through any particular illusion like this one if it’s running in you.
Kind of like, generically working on trauma processing in general might or might not help an alcoholic quit drinking. There’s some reason for hope, but it’s possible to get lost in loops of navel-gazing, especially if they never ever even admit to themselves that they have a problem.
But if it’s targeted, the addiction basically doesn’t stand a chance.
I’m not trying to say “Just work on traumas and be Fully Healed™ before working on AI risk.”
I’m saying something much, much more precise.