I don’t understand why the word “bad” needs to be involved. The motivation of trying to find words that actually describe level 4 even to ourselves, and hopefully to others, to create common knowledge, is a huge motivation. But that has nothing to do with whether level 4 is *bad*. I notice that when I or Benquo (or Jessica or Zack etc etc) describe things while carefully not using “good” or “bad” people constantly ascribe them to us anyway. I understand why, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.
Two things I notice that makes me want to slow down here a bit is:
From this comment:
while carefully not using “good” or “bad” people constantly ascribe them to us anyway.
And from the other comment
and deny the need to think about any of these other dynamics.
First, I do think your layout of the levels here was fair (and seemed to go out of it’s way to do so, especially with the different groupings). A significant chunk of why I think you think level 4 is “bad” is associations from the Moral Mazes sequence, and an assumption that you see level 4 as tightly entwined with the sort of person who thrives in a moral maze. That involved reading into some things you may not have intended, in which case, sorry.
(That said, I’m honestly pretty surprised if you wouldn’t characterize level 4 as “bad”, even if you went out of your way to avoid doing so in this particular post)
Second, man, I went out of my out of my way to say “It’s important to think about the pattern that you’re pointing to with your characterization of level 4, I just don’t think it makes sense to cluster in the simulacrum abstraction. The abstraction seems less useful if it’s trying to do too many things at once.” I’m very much not saying you don’t need to think about these other dynamics.
(a while later I’ll respond in more depth to the object level discussion, right now just wanted to express some worry like, if we’re both reading things into each other other’s comments we didn’t say, that’s a warning side to slow down and be more careful or something)
The ‘bad’ word is just not useful in such situations, I think you even noted that a bunch of people wish I hadn’t used it in Complexity is Bad and Choices are Bad.
We need some amount of level 4 awareness. We need to be able to change social reality not only communicate inside it. And the level 4 effects happen whether we intend or notice them, or not.
What I’d be tempted to call bad is when the general simulacrum level gets to 4. Or when someone gets into the patterns of inability to think about reality on the object level or even to realize a reality exists. It’s still a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.
Also, I don’t think my original comment here was intended to focus on the “badness” characterization.
What I meant to be saying is “It seems like the overall simulacrum model was invented, in large part, to some particular failure modes that happen when society or individuals operate primarily on the level 4 level.” Thus, I realize my suggestion to factor out the implicit “level 4 is complicated” claims probably flies against the original intended-use-case of the model. But, nonetheless, I think it’ll be easier to talk about “societal level 4” and it’s pathologies with a different model that builds off a simpler simulacrum model.
I was just using “bad” as shorthand. It wasn’t meant to be a cruxy element of my argument.
We don’t really have a lot of language to talk about aesthetic nuance. I know that my use of “bad” is just trying to say “it seems like you’re framing this as ugly/unpleasing/aesthetically unpleasing”, but the only words that sort of point at that without a bunch of inferential distance is “bad” and “good”.
I don’t understand why the word “bad” needs to be involved. The motivation of trying to find words that actually describe level 4 even to ourselves, and hopefully to others, to create common knowledge, is a huge motivation. But that has nothing to do with whether level 4 is *bad*. I notice that when I or Benquo (or Jessica or Zack etc etc) describe things while carefully not using “good” or “bad” people constantly ascribe them to us anyway. I understand why, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.
Two things I notice that makes me want to slow down here a bit is:
From this comment:
And from the other comment
First, I do think your layout of the levels here was fair (and seemed to go out of it’s way to do so, especially with the different groupings). A significant chunk of why I think you think level 4 is “bad” is associations from the Moral Mazes sequence, and an assumption that you see level 4 as tightly entwined with the sort of person who thrives in a moral maze. That involved reading into some things you may not have intended, in which case, sorry.
(That said, I’m honestly pretty surprised if you wouldn’t characterize level 4 as “bad”, even if you went out of your way to avoid doing so in this particular post)
Second, man, I went out of my out of my way to say “It’s important to think about the pattern that you’re pointing to with your characterization of level 4, I just don’t think it makes sense to cluster in the simulacrum abstraction. The abstraction seems less useful if it’s trying to do too many things at once.” I’m very much not saying you don’t need to think about these other dynamics.
(a while later I’ll respond in more depth to the object level discussion, right now just wanted to express some worry like, if we’re both reading things into each other other’s comments we didn’t say, that’s a warning side to slow down and be more careful or something)
The ‘bad’ word is just not useful in such situations, I think you even noted that a bunch of people wish I hadn’t used it in Complexity is Bad and Choices are Bad.
We need some amount of level 4 awareness. We need to be able to change social reality not only communicate inside it. And the level 4 effects happen whether we intend or notice them, or not.
What I’d be tempted to call bad is when the general simulacrum level gets to 4. Or when someone gets into the patterns of inability to think about reality on the object level or even to realize a reality exists. It’s still a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.
Nod, makes sense.
I think we are (at least mostly) in agreement about this aspect of the territory, and the disagreement is just over what sort of maps are most useful.
Also, I don’t think my original comment here was intended to focus on the “badness” characterization.
What I meant to be saying is “It seems like the overall simulacrum model was invented, in large part, to some particular failure modes that happen when society or individuals operate primarily on the level 4 level.” Thus, I realize my suggestion to factor out the implicit “level 4 is complicated” claims probably flies against the original intended-use-case of the model. But, nonetheless, I think it’ll be easier to talk about “societal level 4” and it’s pathologies with a different model that builds off a simpler simulacrum model.
I was just using “bad” as shorthand. It wasn’t meant to be a cruxy element of my argument.
We don’t really have a lot of language to talk about aesthetic nuance. I know that my use of “bad” is just trying to say “it seems like you’re framing this as ugly/unpleasing/aesthetically unpleasing”, but the only words that sort of point at that without a bunch of inferential distance is “bad” and “good”.