The above narratives seem to be extremely focused into a tiny part of narrative-space, and it’s actually a fairly good representation of what makes LessWrong a memetic tribe. I will try to give some examples of narratives that are… fundamentally different, from the outside view; or weird and stupid, from the inside view. (I’ll also try to do some translation between conceptual frameworks.) Some of these narratives you already know—just look around the political spectrum, and notice what narratives people live in. There are aslo some narratives I find better than useless:
Karma. Terrible parents will likely have children who can’t reach their full potential and can’t help the world, and who will themselves go on becoming terrible parents. Those who were abused by the powerful will go on abusing their power wherever and whenever they have any. Etc. Your role is to “neutralize the karma”, to break the part of the cycle that operates through you: don’t become a terrible parent yourself, don’t abuse your power, etc. even though you were on the recieving end.
The world is on the verge of collapse because the power of humanity through technology has risen faster than our wisdom to handle it. You have to seek wisdom, not more power.
The world is run by institutions that are run by unconscious people (i.e. people who aren’t fully aware of how their contribution as a cog to a complex machine affects the world). Most problems in the world are caused by the ignorant operation of these institutions. You have to elevate people’s consciousness to solve this problem.
Humans and humanity is evolving through stages of development (according to something like integral theory). Your role is to reach the higher stages of development in your life, and help your environment to do likewise.
History is just life unfolding. Your job isn’t to plan the whole process, just as the job of a single neuron isn’t to do the whole computation. The best thing you can do is just to live in alignment with your true self, and let life unfold as it has to, whatever the consequences (just as a neuron doing anything other than firing according to its “programming” is simply adding noise to the system).
Profit (Moloch) has overtaken culture (i.e. the way people’s minds are programmed). The purpose of profit (i.e. the utility function of Moloch that can be reconstructed from its actions) isn’t human well-being or survival of civilization, so the actions of people (which is a manifestation of the culture) won’t move the world toward these goals. Your role is to raise awareness, and to help reclaim culture from the hands of profit, and put a human in the driver’s seat again (i.e. realign the optimization process by which culture is generated so that the resulting culture is going to be aligned with human values).
Western civilization is at the end of its lifecycle. This civilization has to collapse, to make way for a new one that relates to this civilization in the same way the western civilization relates to the fallen Rome. Your role isn’t to prevent the collapse, but to start creating the first building blocks which will form the basis for the new civilization.
The world is on the brink of a context switch (i.e. the world will move to a formerly inaccessible region of phase space—or has already done so). Your models of the world are optimized to the current context, and therefore they are going to be useless in the new context (no training data in that region of the phase space). So you can’t comprehend the future by trying to think in terms of models, instead you have to reconnect with the process that generated those models. Your role is to be prepared for the context switch to try to mess things up as little as possible, though some of it is inevitable.
Reality (i.e. the “linear mapping” you use to project the world’s phase space to a lower dimensional conceptual space through your perception and sensemaking) is an illusion (i.e. has in its Kernel everything that actually matters). Your role is to realize that (and after that your role will be clear to you).
The world is too complex for any individual to understand. Your role is to be part of a collective sensemaking through openness and dialog that has the potential to collectively understand the world and provide actionable information. (In other words, there is no narrative simple enough for you to understand but complex enough to tackle the world’s challenges.)
The grand narrative you have to live your life by changes depending on your circumstances, just like it depends on where you are whether you have to turn left or right. Your role is to learn to understand and evaluate the utility of narratives, and to increase your capacity to do so.
This list is by no means comprehensive, but this is taking way too much time, so I’ll stop now, lest it should become a babble challenge.
I don’t understand your post. Why are memetic tribes relevant to the discussion of potential existential risks; which is the basis of the original post? Is your argument that all communities have some sort of shared existential threat, that is contradictory to the other existential threats of other communities? It seems to me the point of a rationalist community should be to find the greatest existential threats and focus on finding solutions.
The basis of the original post isn’t existential threats, but narratives—ways of organizing the exponential complexity of all the events in the world into a comparatively simple story-like structure.
Here’s a list of alternative high level narratives about what is importantly going on in the world—the central plot, as it were—for the purpose of thinking about what role in a plot to take
Memetic tribes are only tangentially relevant here. I didn’t really intend to present any argument, just a set of narratives present in some other communities you probably haven’t encountered.
The above narratives seem to be extremely focused into a tiny part of narrative-space, and it’s actually a fairly good representation of what makes LessWrong a memetic tribe. I will try to give some examples of narratives that are… fundamentally different, from the outside view; or weird and stupid, from the inside view. (I’ll also try to do some translation between conceptual frameworks.) Some of these narratives you already know—just look around the political spectrum, and notice what narratives people live in. There are aslo some narratives I find better than useless:
Karma. Terrible parents will likely have children who can’t reach their full potential and can’t help the world, and who will themselves go on becoming terrible parents. Those who were abused by the powerful will go on abusing their power wherever and whenever they have any. Etc. Your role is to “neutralize the karma”, to break the part of the cycle that operates through you: don’t become a terrible parent yourself, don’t abuse your power, etc. even though you were on the recieving end.
The world is on the verge of collapse because the power of humanity through technology has risen faster than our wisdom to handle it. You have to seek wisdom, not more power.
The world is run by institutions that are run by unconscious people (i.e. people who aren’t fully aware of how their contribution as a cog to a complex machine affects the world). Most problems in the world are caused by the ignorant operation of these institutions. You have to elevate people’s consciousness to solve this problem.
Humans and humanity is evolving through stages of development (according to something like integral theory). Your role is to reach the higher stages of development in your life, and help your environment to do likewise.
History is just life unfolding. Your job isn’t to plan the whole process, just as the job of a single neuron isn’t to do the whole computation. The best thing you can do is just to live in alignment with your true self, and let life unfold as it has to, whatever the consequences (just as a neuron doing anything other than firing according to its “programming” is simply adding noise to the system).
Profit (Moloch) has overtaken culture (i.e. the way people’s minds are programmed). The purpose of profit (i.e. the utility function of Moloch that can be reconstructed from its actions) isn’t human well-being or survival of civilization, so the actions of people (which is a manifestation of the culture) won’t move the world toward these goals. Your role is to raise awareness, and to help reclaim culture from the hands of profit, and put a human in the driver’s seat again (i.e. realign the optimization process by which culture is generated so that the resulting culture is going to be aligned with human values).
Western civilization is at the end of its lifecycle. This civilization has to collapse, to make way for a new one that relates to this civilization in the same way the western civilization relates to the fallen Rome. Your role isn’t to prevent the collapse, but to start creating the first building blocks which will form the basis for the new civilization.
The world is on the brink of a context switch (i.e. the world will move to a formerly inaccessible region of phase space—or has already done so). Your models of the world are optimized to the current context, and therefore they are going to be useless in the new context (no training data in that region of the phase space). So you can’t comprehend the future by trying to think in terms of models, instead you have to reconnect with the process that generated those models. Your role is to be prepared for the context switch to try to mess things up as little as possible, though some of it is inevitable.
Reality (i.e. the “linear mapping” you use to project the world’s phase space to a lower dimensional conceptual space through your perception and sensemaking) is an illusion (i.e. has in its Kernel everything that actually matters). Your role is to realize that (and after that your role will be clear to you).
The world is too complex for any individual to understand. Your role is to be part of a collective sensemaking through openness and dialog that has the potential to collectively understand the world and provide actionable information. (In other words, there is no narrative simple enough for you to understand but complex enough to tackle the world’s challenges.)
The grand narrative you have to live your life by changes depending on your circumstances, just like it depends on where you are whether you have to turn left or right. Your role is to learn to understand and evaluate the utility of narratives, and to increase your capacity to do so.
This list is by no means comprehensive, but this is taking way too much time, so I’ll stop now, lest it should become a babble challenge.
[Deleted]
I don’t understand your post. Why are memetic tribes relevant to the discussion of potential existential risks; which is the basis of the original post? Is your argument that all communities have some sort of shared existential threat, that is contradictory to the other existential threats of other communities? It seems to me the point of a rationalist community should be to find the greatest existential threats and focus on finding solutions.
The basis of the original post isn’t existential threats, but narratives—ways of organizing the exponential complexity of all the events in the world into a comparatively simple story-like structure.
Memetic tribes are only tangentially relevant here. I didn’t really intend to present any argument, just a set of narratives present in some other communities you probably haven’t encountered.