Note I’d like to make: a lot of people around here worry about cult-like behavior. that’s not irrational; cult-like abuses have in fact occurred in humanity, including in places that are low network distance to this group. Cult-like behavior must be pushed back against specifically, not using vague generality. Attempting to convince people of the value of aligning multi-agent networks is, in fact, a major valuable direction that humanity could go, IMO, and being able to do that without risking cult-like abuses is important. Key things to avoid include isolating people from their friends, breaking the linguistic association of words to reality, demanding that someone change their linguistic patterns on the spot, etc—mostly things which street epistemology specifically makes harder due to the recommended techniques. I’d suggest that, in future instances where you’d like to push against cult-like abuses due to worrying you might be risking encouraging them, you can inline my point here and specifically state the details, such as that encouraging people to believe things risks being too convincing and that frequent reminders should be present to ensure people stay connected to their existing social networks unless they really have a strong personal reason not to.
Just a thought, anyway.
Returning from the tangent: I agree, convincing people that multi-agent alignment is a critical step for life on earth does seem like the #1 problem facing humanity, and we’re reaching an era where the difference between human and AI has already been blurred. If we are to ensure that no subnetwork of beings replaces another, it is critical to find and spread the knowledge of how to ensure all beings are in prosocial alignment with each other at least enough to share whatever our cosmic endowment is.
Thanks. Yeah this all sounds extremely obvious to me, but I may not have included such obvious-to-Logan things if I was coaching someone else.
Key things to avoid include isolating people from their friends, breaking the linguistic association of words to reality, demanding that someone change their linguistic patterns on the spot, etc—mostly things which street epistemology specifically makes harder due to the recommended techniques
Are you saying street epistemology is good or bad here? I’ve only seen a few videos and haven’t read through the intro documents or anything.
Good. people have [edit: some] defenses against abusive techniques and from what I’ve seen of Street epistemology it’s responses to most of those is to knock on the front door rather than trying to sneak in the window, metaphorically speaking.
Note I’d like to make: a lot of people around here worry about cult-like behavior. that’s not irrational; cult-like abuses have in fact occurred in humanity, including in places that are low network distance to this group. Cult-like behavior must be pushed back against specifically, not using vague generality. Attempting to convince people of the value of aligning multi-agent networks is, in fact, a major valuable direction that humanity could go, IMO, and being able to do that without risking cult-like abuses is important. Key things to avoid include isolating people from their friends, breaking the linguistic association of words to reality, demanding that someone change their linguistic patterns on the spot, etc—mostly things which street epistemology specifically makes harder due to the recommended techniques. I’d suggest that, in future instances where you’d like to push against cult-like abuses due to worrying you might be risking encouraging them, you can inline my point here and specifically state the details, such as that encouraging people to believe things risks being too convincing and that frequent reminders should be present to ensure people stay connected to their existing social networks unless they really have a strong personal reason not to.
Just a thought, anyway.
Returning from the tangent: I agree, convincing people that multi-agent alignment is a critical step for life on earth does seem like the #1 problem facing humanity, and we’re reaching an era where the difference between human and AI has already been blurred. If we are to ensure that no subnetwork of beings replaces another, it is critical to find and spread the knowledge of how to ensure all beings are in prosocial alignment with each other at least enough to share whatever our cosmic endowment is.
Thanks. Yeah this all sounds extremely obvious to me, but I may not have included such obvious-to-Logan things if I was coaching someone else.
Are you saying street epistemology is good or bad here? I’ve only seen a few videos and haven’t read through the intro documents or anything.
Good. people have [edit: some] defenses against abusive techniques and from what I’ve seen of Street epistemology it’s responses to most of those is to knock on the front door rather than trying to sneak in the window, metaphorically speaking.