This machine resists Moloch
Jarred Filmer
Karma: 735
Thank you for taking the time to write this, I enjoyed reading it and it made me think some interesting thoughts :)
I’m very open to the idea that I’ve seen something that wasn’t there and or wasn’t intended 😄, let me see if I can spesifically find what made me feel that way.
Okay, so I have that reaction to paragraphs like this:
White fragility is a sort of defensiveness that takes the form of a variety of strategies that white people deploy when we are confronted with how we participate in and perpetuate racismS. Whites use these strategies to deflect or avoid such a confrontation and to defend a comfortable, privileged vantage point from which race is “not an issue” (at least to us who benefit from it).
and
So if a white person should not pretend to be racially blank, and yet as DiAngelo reminds us “white identity is inherently racist,” what is a white person to do? DiAngelo’s way to thread the needle is this: “I strive to be ‘less white.’ ”
What I hear when I read this is “you are inherently white, and to be white is inheriently bad” thought it’s possible I’m pattern matching this to ideas of being and judgement that I grew up with in Church i.e “you are inherently a sinner”. Do you think this reading is totally unmerited?
And those first two points I’m on board with, but it’s the flavour of the third point that I react to because if I gave someone a bundle of ideas that I reasonably expected to be painful to process I’d try to deliver that message with as much overt kindness and recognition of their pain as I could.
And I’d expect flat statements like “try to drop your defensiveness” or “don’t take it so personally” to just make it harder to process and cause pain I guess 😅. Expecially when the receipients are disposed to think you already don’t like them.
(edited to tone down a little)
This was quite painful to read, and I see the dynamic of these ideas as problematic.
First, possibly the most painful idea for any human to entertain: “A large part of your core identity is inherently very bad in ways you can’t see”
and then second: “The pain and fear you feel in response to this news is a sign of inherent weakness (fragility) and further proves your guilt”
and lastly: “I’m not *trying* to make you feel bad, suppress that pain and take off your silly sack cloth and ashes”“You are inherently bad” → “Your pain on hearing that is weakness and proof of guilt” → “This dynamic is not problematic you’re being weird for over-reacting”
That’s very harsh thing to say to someone and then act like they are weird for having an adverse reaction.
I share your frustration at the book because I’m really sympathetic to the ideas that:
systemic racism is an issue
confusing racismF for racismS is a problem worth exploring
it’s encumbant upon me to look for unjust ways society has been set up that benifit me
the inherent pain majority groups face in grappling with these complex issues is a blocker to progress.
But I feel such sorrow at the idea that the solution to this dynamic is to position that pain itself as an insidious and problematic weakness. And to try and crop dust a generation of young people with that memeplex? That will lead to trouble.
If you want people to hold a painful and nuanced set of complex ideas and grapple with them they need to be held, seen, and supported.
The problem your trying to solve is not how to change your mother’s beliefs. Your problem is how to communicate that she’s making you feel negatively and if the two of you are going to have a relationship she needs to change her behaviour.
Trying to have a system 2 scientific discussion with your mother in this scenario is playing water polo with a lead ball. You may go in with a clear head and a scientific argument and manage to throw the ball. But 3 sentences in and you’re both going to be below water, having an emotional system 1 conversation.
What is an emotional conversation? It’s a conversation in which:
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The goals of the participants are not actually to present facts or reasoning about the world (e.g “homeopathy does not do the things you claim and here’s why”), but to communicate how the actions of another makes them feel (“when I say that homeopathy is not for me but you push it on me it makes me feel disrespected and frustrated”)
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The skills needed to facilitate the conversation are less reasoning and language skills, and more being able to express how your feeling in realtime, communicate you boundaries, being sensitive to how the other person is feeling without taking responsibility for it, and be vulnerable if that’s appropriate.
This is all easier said than done, especially when it comes to family. Some things you can do to practice a conversation like this:
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Have it in your head, and imagine your mother saying whatever would maximally trigger you and how you might respond with emotion communication and boundry setting. (“I feel disrespected” → “it’s not my fault you won’t see the light of homeopathy” → “now I’m feeling like you don’t care that you’re making me feel this way”)
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Role play with a therapist or trusted friend. Some universities or work places offer free therapists that could help you if you’re insurance won’t cover it.
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Read books on the subject like “non violent communication”
Good luck my friend!
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That tweet on Australia might be a little misleading. The vaccination board’s official statement as far as I read is that an under 40 year old is more likley to die of an AZ vaccine than covid given the current covid prevalance and death rate in Australia, which is virtually non-existant. They released a pdf to this effect weighting the risks and their plan is to have everyone under 40 vaccinated on pfizer by the end of the year.
Betting that there won’t be an outbreak before then is still likley the wrong risk to be taking, but it’s less dumb than just saying AZ is more dangerous than covid full stop 😄. Indeed the Prime Minister has drawn the ire of the vacination board by opening up AZ to all ages rather than just over 40ies (apparently older people have half the risk of blood clots and obviously more risk of dying from covid).
If I was in charge of the country I’d do the same, and if I was being the game theory I wanted to see in the world I’d get the AZ now. But living in a city that has no covid and just does a 3 day lockdown until it’s gone every time there’s community transmission (4 or so times since march 2020 pretty evenly distributed) I’m weighing up whether to wait until either another outbreak or pfizer becomes available in a couple months.
This is my great hope also.
There is a compelling narrative to be told around coordination as the super power of humanity that uses the examples of language, printed word and the internet (which are really bundles of smaller technological steps analogous to say zero knowledge proofs in crypto) as positive examples of social technology making things better.
As an enterprising EA in my 20ies I feel the pull of this narrative when thinking about how I might spend my professional efforts, but it remains to be seen if it will survive deeper thought whatever cheap tests I can think to run.
I see landmark as entering into a symbiotic relationship with a parasitic set of memes. It’s a life changing experience for a lot of people, but Landmark wants to grow and it’ll attempt to drain your resources (money, volunteering time, and social capital) to do so.
I had a coworker who was obsessed with landmark, and eventually wore some of us down to attend the intro night. I too was impressed at how psychoactive the environment was, and it seemed to be really helping people! But I felt concerned for many of the same reasons as OP.
There’s a lot of parallels here with psychedelic therapy. One, it’s cheaper and faster than years of CBT. And two you are in essence letting someone really heat up your mind (especially your self conception) to allow you to anneal out of sticky maladaptive local maximas. As OP says, they induce this open state with:
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Exhaustion from long hours and homework
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Putting you on stage in front of a crowd and then manipulating the crowd’s response to you. (i.e. manipulating social reality)
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Installing active memes with good concept handles. Whether or not these memes reflect reality the mind responds to them in powerful and predictable ways if delivered in the right context (as in Christianity)
Unfortunately while you’re in this state landmark also tries to install a powerful evangelical perogative to sign-up everyone you know, and a belief that if you really cared about your continued development you would take the subsequent (also really expensive) courses.
This makes sense, as organisations who find this technology and don’t do this will be out competed by ones that do. But you’re still giving root access to your mind over to an organisation that wants to use your resources to grow.
My coworker is in a lot of tax debt and yet has spent tens of thousands on landmark courses. I took this as a warning and just did therapy and acid instead.
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Thank you very much for taking the time to write this. Scott Alexander and Glen Wyel are two of my intellectual hero’s, they’ve both done a lot for my thinking in economics, coordination, and just how to go about a dialectic intellectual life in general.
So I was also dismayed (to an extent I honestly found surprising) when they couldn’t seem to find a good faith generative dialogue. If these two can’t then what hope is there for the average Red vs Blue tribe member?
This post have me a lot of context though, so thanks again 😊
Is stock in a managed vanguard index fund cheating 😅? I guess that’s assuming vanguard will last to manage it and that there’s no socialist style economic reform that makes owning companies less valuable.
Government bonds maybe?
Huh, you are correct that was indeed my intention 😄 no idea how I managed that.
Is stock in a managed vanguard index fund cheating 😅? I guess that’s assuming vanguard will last to manage it and that there’s no socialist style economic reform that makes owning companies less valuable.
Government bonds maybe?
This is a nice metaphor in general for top down vs bottom up networks with some natural horizontal separation, I like it. Does this appear in the literature or is this just something you think about?
I find this sentiment a little confusing, as it seems to me the subjective experience of suffering is the ultimate bedrock of any idea that understands suffering as bad? If I had no personal experience of suffering or wellbeing I can’t imagine how something like utilitarianism might move me.
Or are you saying while yes ultimately an abstract understanding of suffering rests on a subjective experience of it, pumping the understanding of the subjective experience won’t lead to more understanding of it in the abstract in the way EA needs to?
Made me laugh out loud twice, I enjoyed this post 😊
Technology that “factors stance space” as pol.is tries to do and finds consensus excites me!
I’m very sympathetic to the idea that the ability of modern western countries to cohere / find consensus is a bottlenecked lever in progress. Finding pareto optimal sources of agreement may be a good way to help this.
Aw, she did have a friend all along!
“Performative effort is not effort at all”
I’ve seen people sacrafice a lot to gain the appearance effort. It looked legitimately painful and I think it was.
To me to shows a willingness to endure physical and emotional pain rather than the mental pain of grappling with uncertainty. All they can do is signal that they do care on some level
Love it!
To mirror what I got:
Institutions are structured groups of agent pulling in the same direction to gain redistributable value.
They work by aligning the incentives (especially the long term ones) of the agents with the institution through the technology of an institutional culture to provide guidance and help police detection.
An additional point I’ve been thinking about since I read Sapiens:
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This cultural process recruits map/territory machinery to help people make sense of it. “Journalistic Ethics” is presented as an objective value like “Honour” or “Privilege”
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From the inside “I am a valued member of a cohesive and effective institution” can feel more motivating than “I am working to provide this institution long term value that it will redistribute to me”
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I’ve only tried your standard western teas, are there more exotic brands with more exotic effects? And how do they compare with coffee?
Are the cross overs with the book “The Mind Illuminated” here coincidence? If not very excited to see a mash up of two of my favorite texts!!