What kind of people do you all have in your heads? Do you find that having lots of people in your head (e.g. the way MoR!Harry has lots of people in his head) is helpful for making sense of the world around you and solving problems and so forth? How might I go about populating my head with more people, and what kind of people would it be useful to populate my head with?
When I’m trying to understand something, I imagine myself explaining it to my younger sister. I started doing this when I was a kid, but it is so useful to me, that I never stopped.
I don’t think I have any people in my head other than ‘me.’
It takes me substantial conscious effort to emulate other minds. Is this unusual? (I can however easily argue from premises/to conclusions I don’t believe).
I imagine defending my arguments with people that I know, debate with, and find are good at challenging my beliefs/making me explain them—my girlfriend and my family most usually. They’re always not very good copies—I often make bad predictions at what people will think about certain concepts—but they are useful in getting me to examine arguments. That might be a good place to start.
Ten years or so ago, I used to have more distinct personas in my head than I do now. Back when I did, they roughly speaking exemplified distinct emotional stances. One was more compassionate, one more ruthless, one more frightened, one more loving, and so forth. This wasn’t quite the way Eliezer writes Harry, but shares some key elements.
My model of what’s going on, based on no reliable data, is that there’s a transition period between when a particular stance is altogether unacceptable to the ruling coalition in my head (aka “me”), and when that stance has more-or-less seamlessly joined that coalition (aka “I’ve changed”), during which it is acceptable but not fully internalized and I therefore tag it as “someone else”.
As I say, I don’t do this nearly so much anymore. That’s not to say I’m consistent; I’m not, especially. In particular, I often observe that the way I think and feel is modified by priming effects. I think about problems differently after spending a while reading LW, for example.
What’s changed is that there’s no sense of a separate identity along with that. To put it in MoR terms: my experience is not of having a Slytherin in my head distinct from me that sometimes thinks things, but rather of sometimes thinking things in a more Slytheriny sort of way.
That suggests to me that maybe the difference is in how rigidly I define the boundaries of “the sorts of things I think”.
I sometime find it helpful to label a particular perspective: cynical-Tim, optimistic-Tim, etc. They are helpful for clarifying my thoughts by formalizing a certain type of self-reflection. But they don’t know more than I, so are generally useless at brain-storming—which is how MoR!Harry seems to use them—I’ve taken those discussions as literary conceit and exposition for the readers, not models of how to be more effective.
But they don’t know more than I, so are generally useless at brain-storming
Brainstorming has at least two components: knowing things, and recognizing that a thing you know is relevant to a situation. People inside your head might not be helpful at the former but they might be helpful at the latter, thanks to the brain’s useful ability to mimic other brains.
I think Eliezer might have been inspired by internal family systems, which means this might be more useful at being effective than it sounds.
I often try to understand concepts by pretending to explain them to a historical figure who’s smart enough to understand what I’m saying but from too long ago to know about the thing I’m trying to explain. For example I might try to explain Newton’s Laws to Aristotle.
What kind of people do you all have in your heads? Do you find that having lots of people in your head (e.g. the way MoR!Harry has lots of people in his head) is helpful for making sense of the world around you and solving problems and so forth? How might I go about populating my head with more people, and what kind of people would it be useful to populate my head with?
When I’m trying to understand something, I imagine myself explaining it to my younger sister. I started doing this when I was a kid, but it is so useful to me, that I never stopped.
Kind of weird now that she’s an adult though.
I don’t think I have any people in my head other than ‘me.’
It takes me substantial conscious effort to emulate other minds. Is this unusual? (I can however easily argue from premises/to conclusions I don’t believe).
I imagine defending my arguments with people that I know, debate with, and find are good at challenging my beliefs/making me explain them—my girlfriend and my family most usually. They’re always not very good copies—I often make bad predictions at what people will think about certain concepts—but they are useful in getting me to examine arguments. That might be a good place to start.
Ten years or so ago, I used to have more distinct personas in my head than I do now.
Back when I did, they roughly speaking exemplified distinct emotional stances.
One was more compassionate, one more ruthless, one more frightened, one more loving, and so forth.
This wasn’t quite the way Eliezer writes Harry, but shares some key elements.
My model of what’s going on, based on no reliable data, is that there’s a transition period between when a particular stance is altogether unacceptable to the ruling coalition in my head (aka “me”), and when that stance has more-or-less seamlessly joined that coalition (aka “I’ve changed”), during which it is acceptable but not fully internalized and I therefore tag it as “someone else”.
As I say, I don’t do this nearly so much anymore. That’s not to say I’m consistent; I’m not, especially. In particular, I often observe that the way I think and feel is modified by priming effects. I think about problems differently after spending a while reading LW, for example.
What’s changed is that there’s no sense of a separate identity along with that. To put it in MoR terms: my experience is not of having a Slytherin in my head distinct from me that sometimes thinks things, but rather of sometimes thinking things in a more Slytheriny sort of way.
That suggests to me that maybe the difference is in how rigidly I define the boundaries of “the sorts of things I think”.
I sometime find it helpful to label a particular perspective: cynical-Tim, optimistic-Tim, etc. They are helpful for clarifying my thoughts by formalizing a certain type of self-reflection. But they don’t know more than I, so are generally useless at brain-storming—which is how MoR!Harry seems to use them—I’ve taken those discussions as literary conceit and exposition for the readers, not models of how to be more effective.
Brainstorming has at least two components: knowing things, and recognizing that a thing you know is relevant to a situation. People inside your head might not be helpful at the former but they might be helpful at the latter, thanks to the brain’s useful ability to mimic other brains.
I think Eliezer might have been inspired by internal family systems, which means this might be more useful at being effective than it sounds.
I often try to understand concepts by pretending to explain them to a historical figure who’s smart enough to understand what I’m saying but from too long ago to know about the thing I’m trying to explain. For example I might try to explain Newton’s Laws to Aristotle.