Agree. You use process X to determine the setup and agents instantiating X are going to be constrained. Any decision theory would be at a disadvantage when singled out like this.
aleksiL
Karma: 187
I get the feeling that if Harry learns the Killing Curse he’ll manage to tweak it somehow, on the order of Patronus 2.0 or partial Transfiguration.
I arrived at this idea by intuition—it seems to fit, but I don’t think there’s much explicit support. AFAICT I’m mostly pattern-matching on story logic, AK’s plot significance and symmetry with Patronus, and Harry’s talent for breaking things by thinking at them.
I think my probability estimate for this (given that Harry learns AK in the first place) is around 30%, but I suspect I’m poorly calibrated.
I’ve been meditating for about two weeks now, and been progressing surprisingly quickly. Concentration came easy, and I started having interesting experiences pretty much straight away. I’d like to share my latest sitting and hopefully get some input.
I sat cross-legged on my couch and started concentrating on my breath as usual. Soon there was a discontinuity: my concentration lapsed, it felt as if my attention was fully in a nonsensical, dreamlike thought for just a second and suddenly I was in a clearer, lighter, easier state. It’s happened similarly several times before, but I haven’t been this fully aware of it earlier.
I continued meditating normally for a while; the clear state tends to be pretty stable once I enter it. Then I tried to let go of my awareness/concentration (never tried that before) and things got interesting. I was still aware, possibly still centered on my breath, but everything started to change. It felt as if my body was shifting, twisting, turning. I knew I hadn’t moved but my body position seemed contorted, even impossible, as if different body parts were turning different ways, almost as if I was swirling. There was a sense of facing in two directions, alternating rapidly, maybe 30 degrees apart.
The rest is harder to describe. I was aware, but there was a sense that the awareness would’ve been unusually hard to locate. I’m not sure if I tried, though. After a while it seemed attenuated, somehow. There was a sense of not wanting to let go, not sure of what exactly. Possibly myself, or awareness of what was happening. Overall there was a sense of… something. If “something” is even a right word for it. Over or in-between everything else that was going on.
After a while things started settling down a bit and I felt tired, so I ended the session. It had lasted about 20 minutes.
Thoughts?
My biggest problem when meditating is that when I focus on my breath, I switch to breathing consciously[...]
I’ve started to suspect that this difficulty is actually a feature. Observing without interfering seems like an important skill to learn if the goal is to be more aware of your thoughts and actions in general.
Imagine, say, being consciously aware of every detail of your leg movements while walking; it becomes a lot more difficult if you don’t know how to stay out of your own way.
It seems to me as if you view terminal goals as universal, not mind-specific. Is this correct, or have I misunderstood?
The point, as I understand it, that some humans seem to have happiness as a terminal goal. If you truly do not share this goal, then there is nothing left to explain. Value is in the mind, not inherent in the object it is evaluating. If one person values a thing for its own sake but another does not, this is a fact about their minds, not a disagreement about the properties of the thing.
Was this helpful?
Another data point: I wasn’t too bothered with the general sales-pitchiness of the first two posts, possibly because I’ve occasionally gained useful knowledge by reading actual sales pitches from the self-help crowd.
That said, you had me hooked by the third paragraph of Part I and I’ve been going “get to the POINT already” since then. I do see some value in personal testimony, but it should be far more condensed.
You seem to currently have exactly one downvoted comment outside the HPMOR discussion and that at only −1. What makes you think the effects you see aren’t simply a result of people actively participating in these threads noticing and responding to comments they deem poorly supported? No following around required.
As for the downvotes, I suspect an overwelming majority of them result from your adversarial reactions to criticism, not the HPMOR content. How many downvotes had this received before you added this edit?
What the hell with the random neg reps, seriously. This site actually has worse and stronger and more irrational groupthinking than other sites I visit. This is bizarre and unhealthy, I think I might not comment on here anymore, although I’m not really sure yet because the quality of the actual posts is much better although the comments are worse.
Edited per thomblake’s suggestion.
Here’s a vote for not-mind-reading. This seems deliberately written to suggest Quirrell’s reacting to body language, not thought:
Without any conscious decision, she shifted her weight to the other foot, her body moving away from the Defense Professor -
“So you think I am the one responsible?” said Professor Quirrell.
What’s the in-story justification for the dementor’s presence anyway? I thought it seemed awfully convenient in case Harry decided to demonstrate his Patronus 2.0 but I couldn’t figure out how it’d help enough.
I’d forgotten about the potential for ruining others’ patronuses, though. That makes a lot more sense, especially considering he’d just reached into his dark side—possibly deeper than he’d ever willingly done before.
My guess: it wouldn’t be enough at this point to just demonstrate a superior patronus or tell people about the possibility of ruining it for others. He tells the secret to EVERYONE present, leaving them at his mercy for protection. That gives him plenty of bargaining power and is dramatically Dark to boot. The political implications would be rather interesting, whether the Patroni could be returned by Obliviation or not.
Both of those seem to fit the pattern perfectly when you consider evolution as an actor.
Maybe we should be discussing optimization power instead of intelligence; evolution seems a pretty decent manipulator considering how stupid it is.
An interesting post. I immediately thought of asking “What habits would I adopt if the long-term effects were in full force immediately?”
I think I have some thinking to do.
Edit: typo.
(ch56)
Has the nature of Harry’s mysterious dark side been established yet? If not, the latest chapter gives a strong hint toward it being a shard of Voldemort.
In chapter 56, Harry discovers that his vulnerability to Dementors is due to his dark side’s fear of death. And, back in chapter 39, in the discussion between Harry and Dumbledore it was suggested that Voldemort was motivated by fear of death. Not quite proof, but interesting nonetheless.
That was beautiful. And funny. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed and cried simultaneously before. Not at the same thing anyway.
Just… wow.
Where do people get this “no depth cues” claim? The way her lifted leg moves suggests so obviously a clockwise motion that even Alicorn’s link can’t make my brain see the counterclockwise motion for longer than a round or two at most.
I mean, the only way the perspective makes any sense is if the lifted leg is furthest away when it’s the highest up in the 2d image. Yes, the shadow/reflection is all wrong but for some reason my brain just refuses to give that priority.
What cues do others use? I’d love to see variations of this image with different cues present/absent/reversed.
ETA: I’m no longer sure that the reflection is wrong. But something about the image is off.
Edit: typos
Sounds like your definition of “well-socialized” is closer to “well-adjusted” than RobinZ’s.
As I understand them, skill in navigating social situations, epistemic rationality and psychological well-being are all separate features. They do seem to correlate, but the causal influences are not obvious.
ETA: Depends a lot on the standard you use, too. RobinZ is probably correct if you look at the upper quartile but less so for the 99th percentile.
In short, I used to believe that social skills are a talent you’re born with, not a skill to be developed. Luckily just being around people and paying attention improved my eye for social cues enough that I eventually noticed.
This relates to Carol S. Dweck’s book Mindset, which I’ve mentioned before. I’m thinking of writing more about it sometime soon.
It becomes a bit less surprising when you consider that I attribute my low score mostly to relatively recent changes in my social skills and preferences, and the criteria I checked were the ones about all-absorbing narrow interests and imposition of routines and interests. As a matter of fact, the changes I mention came about as a result of months of near-obsessive study and accidental practice. (I did not grasp the importance of practice at the time but that’s a subject for another comment.)
Maybe I wasn’t that far toward the autism end of the spectrum to begin with but it does make me wonder just how much others could improve their social skills given the right circumstances.
I originally looked at the poll but didn’t answer until now.
I fit two of the Gillberg diagnostic criteria and scored 19 on the wired test. I would’ve definitely scored much higher a few years back when I suspected I might have asperger’s. My social skills have developed a lot since then and I’m now more inclined to attribute my social deficiencies to lack of practice than anything else.
For what it’s worth, I do seem to follow a pattern of intense pursuit of relatively few interests that change over time.
(Note: This post is speculation based on memory and introspection and possibly completely mistaken. Any help in clarifying my thinking and gathering evidence on this would be greatly appreciated.)
I suspect that I’m also affected by this and just haven’t conciously noticed. Feels like I’m a lot more comfortable with analytical modes than more intuitive/social ones and probably spending more time inducing them than I should.
I’d like to be more aware of my mental modes and find more effective ways of influencing them. Any suggestions?
ETA: Now that I think about it I get a weird feeling. Certain types of concentration seem to act a lot like emotions. The duration seems right, there seems to be a certain mutual exclusivity: strong emotions make it harder to concentrate and intense concentration makes it harder to feel those emotions. Are mental modes emotions?
Interesting, I’ve occasionally experimented with something similar but never thought of contacting Autopilot this way. Yeah, that’s what I’ll call him.
I get the feeling that this might be useful in breaking out of some of my procrastination patterns: just call Autopilot and tell him which routine to start. Not tested yet, as then I’d forget about writing this reply.