Here is a list of all my public writings and videos.
If you want to do a dialogue with me, but I didn’t check your name, just send me a message instead. Ask for what you want!
lsusr
Karma: 17,181
Typo fixed.
Thank you for adding the link. I think the comments are a good place for it.
This Bene Gesserit stuff is building on top of the stuff I learned in rhetorical aikedo. I got good enough at socratic dialogue that I can put those words on autopilot and focus instead on what my interlocutor’s ego is doing.
Thank you for the excellent comment.
“Dualism is used as a fundamental interpretative tool” is a good way of putting it.
“When meditating, dualism gets broken down due to lack of feedback loops and an increase in neutral annealing, leading to nondual world models” ← Also yes.
What I was trying to get at with the non-cyclic graph stuff is that if all the brain did was non-causally model an external world, then it is always possible in principle to create a simulation where sensory inputs affect the simulation unidirectionally, and information flows through the simulation itself with no cycles. This is like how our weather prediction computers do not predictably affect the weather itself, or how planetariums do not affect the movement of the stars.
Embedded world optimizers are different. Your world model affect your motor outputs which affect the physical world which affects the world model. This is a cycle. In this way, non-embedded world optimizers such as chess engines (which are effectively stateless due to Minimax) differ from embedded world optimizers such as our brains, because embedded world optimizers cause cyclic causal loops when interacting with their environment. It’s basically the Time Travel Paradox problem, except without any need for time travel. Your brain makes sense of this by scribbling “free will” over a link in the chain it doesn’t want to look too closely at. By pretending this link is effectively random, it simplifies what appears to be an intractable self-referential problem into what appears to be (but isn’t) a tractable non-self-referential one. Meditation temporarily breaks a link in the cycle by stopping the motor outputs where you make changes to the physical external world. Without that link in the cycle, the loop is cut and the causality becomes non-cyclic [while you’re meditating].
Answer A: The computational intractability is a side effect of being
an embedded world optimizer𝓪 𝓫𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓸𝓯 𝓷𝓮𝓾𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓼 that must satisfy the conflicting optimization targets of “create a simulated world that accurately models external physical reality” and “optimize the simulated world into a desired state”. The Gordian knot of computational intractability is transcended by giving up trying to be an interpretible world optimizer as defined by, say, decision theory. All those abstractions that insulate your value system from your world model? You just throw them out. The computationally intractable problem is still computationally intractable. It just stops being a problem for you, because you’re not trying to solve that problem anymore.Answer B: Awakening is not limited to therevada/Samatha. I got there via Zen, for example, which is non-Therevadan. You can even detect Awakening in non-Buddhists when you know what to look for. For example, I believe Mary Baker Eddy ended up at stream entry via Christian prayer.
Is the non-cyclic graph a way of modelling causality as state transitions?
I hope I answered your question. I’m uncertain what you’re trying to ask here due to an ambiguity in the word “state”. The word “state”, can refer to many different things in this context, including altered states of consciousness (as distinct from altered traits), the computational concept of state (vs statelessness), and also attractors (which are similar to altered traits).
Stream Entry
This model of dissolving the self is consistent with my experience meditating.
I like that [clickbait] isn’t a pressure that I’m under.
I have never clicked on a post by jefftk and then been disappointed that it was clickbait.
Meta: I think throwing up a paper of yours is good practice here when it directly addresses the point. I link to my own blog posts in the same way all the time.
By the way, there’s an edit button too, which you can use to retroactively linkify your link.
Yes, Bryan Caplan is not noticeably differentiated from other libertarian economists.
I’d be curious to hear if you see something deeper or more totalising in these people?
My answer might contain a frustratingly small amount of detail, because answering your question properly would require a top-level post for each person just to summarize the main ideas, as you thoroughly understand.
Paul Graham is special because he has a proven track record of accurately calibrated confidence. He has an entire system for making progress at unknown unknowns. Much of that system is about knowing what you don’t know, which results in him carefully restricting claims about his narrow domain of specialization. However, because that domain of specialization is “startups”, its lightcone has already had (what I consider to be) a totalising impact.
Asimov’s turned The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire into his first popular novel. He eventually extended the whole thing into a future competition between different visions of the future. [I’m being extra vague to avoid spoilers.] He didn’t just create one Dath Ilan. He created two of them (albeit at much lower resolution). Plus a dystopian one for them to compete with, because the Galactic Empire (his sci-fi version of humanity’s current system at the time of his writing) wasn’t adequate competition.
As to the other authors you mention:
I haven’t read enough Greg Egan or Vernor Vinge to comment on them.
Heinlein absolutely has “his own totalising and self-consistent worldview/philosophy”. I love his writing, but I just don’t agree with him enough for him to make the list. I prefer Saturn’s Children (and especially Neptune’s Brood) by Charles Stross. Saturn’s Children is basically Heinlein + Asimov fanfiction that takes their work in a different direction. Neptune’s Brood is its sequel about interstellar cryptocoin markets.
Clarke was mostly boring to me, except for 3001: The Final Odyssey.
Neal Stephenson is definitely smart, but I never got the feeling he was trying to mind control me. Maybe that’s just because he’s so good at it.
to hate something is the origin of my work
I like that quote.
Yes! 100%. I too have noticed that stating these outright doesn’t work at all. It’s also bad for developing one too.
When I’m trying to sell ideas I do so more indirectly than this. The reason I wrote this post is because I felt I did have one, and wanted to verify to myself that this was true.
Regarding genocide and factory farms, my point was just that abusing others for your self-benefit is an adaptive behavior. That’s all. Nothing deeper than that.
By the way, I appreciate you trying to answer the crux of my question to the extent that makes sense. This is exactly the kind of thinking I was hoping to provoke.
As for being attuned with your own taste, it is an especially necessary component of a totalizing worldview for artists e.g. Leonardo, Miyazaki, Eiichiro Oda.
I really like your post. Good how-to manuals like yours are rare and precious.
Living with Rats in College
I think there’s a mild anticorrelation between [Steven Byrnes’] posts’ karma and how objectively good and important they are...
I agree that this is true of posts that deviate from trendy topics and/or introduce new ideas, in a way that is especially true of your posts.
For long-time power users like me, I can benefit from the best possible “reputation system”, which is actually knowing most of the commenters.
As another power user, I feel this benefit too.
There are no better opportunities to change the world than here at Effective Evil.
―Morbus in To Change the World
If you use Linux, I trust you can manage on your own.
Personally, I put the line
exec --no-startup-id setxkbmap -option ctrl:swapcapsin my.config/i3/configfile. Of course, this only works if you’re using the i3 tiling window manager. And if you unplug your keyboard you’ll have to re-run the command manually.
One of the tricky things about writing fiction is that anything definite I write in the comments can impact what is canon in the story, resulting in the frustrating undeath of the author’s intent.
Therefore, rather than affirm or deny any of your specific claims, I just want to note that I appreciate your quality comment.
Another difficulty in writing science fiction is that good stories tend to pick one technology and then explore all its implications in a legible way, whereas our real future involves lots of different technologies interacting in complex multi-dimensional ways too complicated to fit into an appealing narrative or even a textbook.
I try to inspire people to reach for their potential.
Is anyone else on this website making YouTube videos? Less Wrong is great, but if you want to broadcast to a larger audience, video seems like the place to be. I know Rational Animations makes videos. Is there anyone else? Are you, personally, making any?