Some reasons why the anti-democratic tendencies might matter:
This might be the guy in charge of deploying AGI and negotiating with other nations about it. I think we should be very concerned about the values of the person with the most power over this process. While purely caring about democracy could matter a lot for this, it’s also a signal of a general lack of values and lack of thinking about values, that seems concerning if he can make decisions about governing AGI with massive downstream effects.
I think his anti-democratic tendencies also display his intense power-hunger. It seems dangerous to have someone with this characteristic wielding power over the development of an incredibly powerful technology that could be used for all kinds of nefarious purposes.
There is also some small chance that Trump either attempts to seize power or manipulates the coming election for a supporter of his. I think this probably increases the chances of a far less competent and value-aligned person taking the helm in 2028.
In general, the public seems pretty bought-in on AI risk being a real issue and is interested in regulation. Having democratic instincts would perhaps push in the direction of good regulation (though the relationship here seems a little less clear).
As far as Taiwan I worry that Trump’s strategic ambiguity has a few too many dashes of ambiguity on this front which could lead to increased chance of crises which could escalate into something much worse. I don’t really have strong opinions about how Trump vs Kamala would fare on Taiwan though to be honest.
This jogged a lot of thinking about how it fits into various modalities. I think the lack of an actual solution to hostile mind-reading might be a flaw in several modalities I’ve tried which could be part of why I’ve struggled to have the progress I made with them stick. Many of these at least point toward alternative methods of dealing with self-deception which could be useful and I think authentic relating suggests at least one idea for an alternative method of occlumency which feels a little more virtuous (definitely felt some aversion to your solutions because of this).
Existential Kink
This is a pretty weird book. Very much not my style but have found it useful on recommendation of Sasha Chapin’s post about persistent self-love. Still new to this so might be getting it a little wrong.
Existential kink is like ’find the desire behind the self-deception and learn to love it, appreciate it. Learn to be ok with the presence of this desire.
I think it doesn’t really have a solution to actually dealing with hostile mindreaders effectively but maybe I haven’t got there yet.
Main practice is something like: Find a pattern which is coming up often (e.g. losing interest in someone quickly after they show interest in you) and then dive into the deep desires underlying that. What is thrilling and great about this pattern, what does it get you? E.g. maybe it allows you to imagine you’ll find the perfect person, allows you to think of yourself as superior in some confusing way (i.e. I’d never date someone willing to stoop so low as to date me), helps avoid the potential for rejection (e.g. if I reject them first I’m perfectly safe from rejection and being safe from rejection is NICE).
So in this case you’d make peace with the desire to avoid rejection and the sense of superiority doing the rejecting gives you. Now you can notice those senses without needing to avoid them.
When it comes to how you engage with that in the real world… Unclear.
In many cases it seems like the desire itself recedes somewhat and I’m not sure why.
E.g. I confronted this and am currently dating someone. I notice sometimes the fear of rejection and the sense of ‘I could find someone better’ but they feel not that important to me. I want her attention and I get it and that feels nice. I have my uncertainties sure but idk, I guess other things feel more important after having acknowledged these hidden desires?
Where did the desire to be superior, the desire to find the absolute best go? Why would recognizing it and embodying it reduce it?
Perhaps now it shares the stage with other emotions and I can recognize that in comparison I care more about those other things? E.g. a stable relationship and someone I enjoy being around just does seem better than being able to avoid rejection and feeling superior to attractive women when they’re both in the clear.
Why would a desire be stronger when it’s ONLY in the subconscious?
It’s got wrong priorities or doesn’t understand the situation. E.g. it’s optimizing for more of a childhood scenario? Not sure...
Nondual practice
Coming out of self-deception is a key aspect of nondual practice. Adyashanti talks about a practice of coming to accept all parts of ourselves. Mostly this is through meditation and just being ok with everything that arises. He also has another technique that seems more hands-on but he doesn’t really give much a description that I’ve seen so not really sure what the process is—would like to know!
Loch Kelly uses IFS as a tool for full self-acceptance and a way to move through self-deception (more on that below).
When I’ve been in a nondual state for longer periods on retreat I’ve noticed that I can find desires which I generally don’t acknowledge and feel totally alright with them. The threat of consequences for the belief feel unimportant because I know that I can live with the consequences and still feel this deep sense of okayness.
E.g. I could be really critical of myself and notice failures and just be like ‘wow, so cool that I’m noticing these failures, well done’. And this isn’t something I’d practiced it just came along for the ride.
Unfortunately this hasn’t stuck around much and seems to require a lot of steady dedication to re-entering the state. I think probably I could do this somewhat reliably but for some reason I don’t want to or don’t trust it? I’m not really sure what’s going on here but I mostly don’t inhabit this state anymore and I’m not entirely sure why. Probably some self-deception going on?
IFS
IFS talks a lot about protector parts which are often self-deceiving in order to protect some other part. A crucial part of every IFS session is to ask the protector what age they think you are (often, at least in examples, it would say something like 5-12) and then you could reveal to it that actually you’re 30 (or whatever). And sometimes this would lift the burden and the protector would suddenly be like ‘oh, I guess we don’t really need to have all these walls up, we can handle some difficult reactions now’. I think this is basically the power solution to self-deception.
This sometimes has just worked for me in a clear and discontinuous way. That said, it’s usually reverted at least to some extent after a few days or weeks. I never really figured out how to stop the reversion which is why I ended up giving up on IFS (mostly). Could be in part due to lack of solution to hostile telepaths problem.
TEAM CBT
This is my current favorite modality (along with existential kink).
A lot of it is finding a belief that you might not even really believe rationally but which feels true (e.g. I’m worthless) and then exploring that. There are a million different ways to explore the beliefs so I’m finding it a little harder to connect it with hostile mind-reading.
One of my favorite methods in TEAM CBT is cost-benefit analysis. So with ‘I’m worthless’ you might set a timer for 5-10min and fill out the positives. Some examples might be:
I’m not responsible for anything, I’m worthless so there’s no obligation for me to fix the world’s problems.
If people see that I think I’m worthless then they’ll probably want to comfort me and provide support—that can be pretty nice!
Then you’d do the negatives (e.g. it makes me feel bad all the time, makes work harder, etc) and when looking at them side by side you might recognize that you do care about meeting some of the more hidden desires (e.g. being cared for) but this belief is not the best way to go about that.
All of these methods have mostly been about self-deception and recognizing it but mostly doesn’t deal with the hostile mind-reading aspect. That’s perhaps a key reason why they haven’t fully worked for me! I’ve had the feeling that I could accept these things but haven’t wanted to admit them. I do think Authentic Relating has a useful solution here though that has helped at least somewhat:
Circling & Authentic Relating:
Though you’re trying to reveal as much as you can about yourself it’s not useful to push too far beyond what you’re comfortable with. Pushing too far can be somewhat traumatizing and lead to setbacks. Instead you can wholeheartedly welcome some thoughts but decide you don’t need to share them. Rather than stonewalling or lying, you can simply say things like ‘I’m feeling some shame right now around a thought that’s coming up. I’m not quite ready to share it but it feels good to voice that it’s there’.
This idea that one could fully accept something happening inside that might feel shameful to reveal while not sharing it was pretty big for me. It empowered me to feel I could explore more scary stuff. For example, a problem I’ve had in some circling situations was thoughts like ‘wow she’s attractive, I notice myself feeling some arousal but it would be weird to share that’ or ‘I don’t find her attractive I want to make clear I’m not interested but this would be really offensive to say out loud’. Both of these are things that, when I first did authentic relating I was really trying to do some Newcomblike self-deception around. I was trying to be someone who doesn’t think these thoughts, I would distract myself, latch onto other thoughts arising that I would feel comfortable revealing. Once I felt empowered to have these thoughts without revealing them that became somewhat easier—I could reveal some nervousness and discomfort but not reveal the actual thought. And sometimes I would reveal these thoughts and that would usually go quite well.
To be fair, I don’t think I’ve fully internalized this and this maybe makes it sound like more of a solved problem than it is. That said, I think this is an important step and seems kinda similar to occlumency but a little more virtuous? (which is my main problem with occlumency as described)