I have a soapbox, which may have unintentionally put myself up as a source of authority, at least to myself.
There’s an SMBC comic of Zach Weinersmith comics where he’s said words to the effect of “my brain is weird, I get thoughts like “why are people still using this argument I already satirised it in a comic”” [1]
After I wrote my evidence not theory post I noticed some slight irritation while chatting to my father. “Hey you’re doing this dynamic even though I already explained to some people on the internet why it’s bad”.
Let’s try and steel man this subagent of mine that is worried about being authoritative,
Giving a speech to a large number of people, future allies and so on is a task I believe I wouldn’t take lightly.
You’re trying to explain to this crowd of people what your worldview is, what kind of person you are. This allows for greater coordination & cooperation. Folks in the audience will offer you different opportunities depending on who you say you are.
It doesn’t seem too unreasonable that committing to be a certain way gets you a dump of utility. As you’re “fixed” [2]. Yet it can also constrain you. Pretty sure this is going to happen regardless. [3]
This youtube artist marydoodles has talked about getting stuck in a style. In her case it’s watercolour time-lapse with often a funny twist in the painting. I wouldn’t be surprised if singers feel similarly, The audience’s “We liked your old stuff better” might be a bit rough. Bo Burnham a comedian has a wonderful if saddening (to me) song on it. [4]
let’s imagine in a blog post: I say ” X ” . Later I find in particular cases turns out ” ¬X ”, turns out reality is vast and complicated and can’t be compressed into little english predicates, what do ya know.
However maybe: I’ve just announced to the tribe that I’m going to stand by the norm of ” X ”. I’m kinda motivated not to notice ” ¬X ” because hey, that would be kinda awkward.
So what is this dynamic and how can I solve it or avoid it:
bias toward reporting experience flavoured things “This saddens me” as opposed to “this is sad”
acknowledging the limit of my current perspective, not constraint my future self through slogans of the form “X is true”
some form of declaimer about the kinds of linguistic mess that I’m about and is happening here.
knowledge of the kinds of people who enjoy reading these things.
If a hypothesis is sufficiency large, perhaps I could say X, then later ¬X. (dialectics! [5])
So here’s a disclaimer:
my posts are just guesses. use them if they’re useful. ignore them if they’re not. I’m not any authority & don’t really know what I’m doing. :)
Intuitions behind such a disclaimer:
When you’ve decided you know how reality works, it’s really hard to look at reality. This is a part of why curiosity is so great.
I consider a particular kind of advertising the dark arts, eg “let’s make the message as simple and un-nuanced as possible”
Also, Richard Feynman’s, The Pleasure of Figuring Things Out:
They expected me to be wonderful … But I wasn’t wonderful. And therefore I realised a new principle: I’m not responsible for what other people think I’m able to do. I don’t have to be good because they think I’m going to be good.
And somehow or other, I could relax about this. I thought to myself ‘I haven’t done anything important, well, I’m never going to do anything important.’ … So I decided I’m only going to do things for the fun of it.
writing, like everything [citation needed] is about resolving internal conflicts.
One thing this might be is an mostly-honest report of one persons mental experiences as they gently mediate a discussion between “I want to write a post” & the >5 other conflicting sub-agents desires that is me. I hope you don’t take this as much more than that. But hey, you do you.
it’s hard to look at reality when you’ve already decided what reality looks like
So here I am, posting a thing.
I have a soapbox, which may have unintentionally put myself up as a source of authority, at least to myself.
There’s an SMBC comic of Zach Weinersmith comics where he’s said words to the effect of “my brain is weird, I get thoughts like “why are people still using this argument I already satirised it in a comic”” [1]
After I wrote my evidence not theory post I noticed some slight irritation while chatting to my father. “Hey you’re doing this dynamic even though I already explained to some people on the internet why it’s bad”.
Let’s try and steel man this subagent of mine that is worried about being authoritative,
Giving a speech to a large number of people, future allies and so on is a task I believe I wouldn’t take lightly.
You’re trying to explain to this crowd of people what your worldview is, what kind of person you are. This allows for greater coordination & cooperation. Folks in the audience will offer you different opportunities depending on who you say you are.
It doesn’t seem too unreasonable that committing to be a certain way gets you a dump of utility. As you’re “fixed” [2]. Yet it can also constrain you. Pretty sure this is going to happen regardless. [3]
This youtube artist marydoodles has talked about getting stuck in a style. In her case it’s watercolour time-lapse with often a funny twist in the painting. I wouldn’t be surprised if singers feel similarly, The audience’s “We liked your old stuff better” might be a bit rough. Bo Burnham a comedian has a wonderful if saddening (to me) song on it. [4]
let’s imagine in a blog post: I say ” X ” . Later I find in particular cases turns out ” ¬X ”, turns out reality is vast and complicated and can’t be compressed into little english predicates, what do ya know.
However maybe: I’ve just announced to the tribe that I’m going to stand by the norm of ” X ”. I’m kinda motivated not to notice ” ¬X ” because hey, that would be kinda awkward.
So what is this dynamic and how can I solve it or avoid it:
bias toward reporting experience flavoured things “This saddens me” as opposed to “this is sad”
acknowledging the limit of my current perspective, not constraint my future self through slogans of the form “X is true”
some form of declaimer about the kinds of linguistic mess that I’m about and is happening here.
knowledge of the kinds of people who enjoy reading these things.
If a hypothesis is sufficiency large, perhaps I could say X, then later ¬X. (dialectics! [5])
So here’s a disclaimer: my posts are just guesses. use them if they’re useful. ignore them if they’re not. I’m not any authority & don’t really know what I’m doing. :)
Intuitions behind such a disclaimer:
When you’ve decided you know how reality works, it’s really hard to look at reality. This is a part of why curiosity is so great.
I consider a particular kind of advertising the dark arts, eg “let’s make the message as simple and un-nuanced as possible”
Gerry Sussman’s we don’t really know how to compute
Also, Richard Feynman’s, The Pleasure of Figuring Things Out:
writing, like everything [citation needed] is about resolving internal conflicts.
One thing this might be is an mostly-honest report of one persons mental experiences as they gently mediate a discussion between “I want to write a post” & the >5 other conflicting sub-agents desires that is me. I hope you don’t take this as much more than that. But hey, you do you.
help I’m trapped in the meta.
[1] if anyone can find it, lemme know.
[2] Prickles and Goo by Kevin Simler
[3] current policy: mitigate what damage you can. don’t worry about what you can’t, see if you can figure out how to tell the two apart.
[4] Bo Burnham—Can’t Handle This (Kanye Rant)
[5] DBT Sequence: Dialectics, Thing of Things.