Milan_Griffes
I agree!
Could you say more about why this request seems extremely unreasonable to you?
My request applies to both positive and negative responses.
… but that is very costly, and I am a busy person with no particular ex ante reason to believe it would be a good use of scarce time.
I’m curious about why this feels very costly to you, and also about how that feeling is showing up for you in your body and in your mind.
I agree that it’s sorta lazy, but I strongly disagree that it is bad practice.
Good!
I’m curious about what being extremely confused feels like for you, in your body and in your mind.
Thanks… I think the first issue is much more important, and that’s what I want to focus on here.
From my perspective, the posts I linked out to more-or-less track reality.
Why do you think that it is an unreasonable request?
Is there some other way I can do that?
If the posts feel juicy, take your time meandering through them (take however long it takes to do so in a fun, comfortable way… could be over the course of months or years).
Once you feel comfortable with the material, think about whether or not you want to engage further with me (and/or others) about it, or engage further plus do some other awesome thing.
And then do what you want to do! While taking your time, and being extremely honest (and gentle) with yourself about what you actually want.
From the post:
I want you to think carefully and spaciously for yourself about what is best, and then do the things that seem best as they come to you from that spacious place
Thank you for this thoughtful reply! I appreciate it, and the disambiguation is helpful. (I would personally like to do as much thinking-in-public about this stuff as seems feasible.)
I mean a combination of (1) and (4).I used to not believe that (4) was a thing, but then I started to notice (usually unconscious) patterns of (4) behavior arising in me, and as I investigated further I kept noticing more & more (4) behavior in me, so now I think it’s really a thing (because I don’t believe that I’m an outlier in this regard).
(4) is the interesting version of this claim, and I think there’s some truth to it. I also think that this problem is much more widespread than just our own community, and fixing it is likely one of the core bottlenecks for civilization as a whole.
I agree with this. I think EA and Bay Area Rationality still have a plausible shot at shifting out of this equilibrium, whereas I think most communities don’t (not self-reflective enough, too tribal, too angry, etc...)
I think part of the problem is that people get triggered into defensiveness; when they mentally simulate (or emotionally half-simulate) setting up a feedback mechanism, if that feedback mechanism tells them they’re doing the wrong thing, their anticipations put a lot of weight on the possibility that they’ll be shamed and punished, and not much weight on the possibility that they’ll be able to switch to something else that works better.
Yes, this is a good statement of one of the equilibria that it would be profoundly good to shift out of. Core transformation is one operationalization of how to go about this.
I feel that you are choosing to not honor my request by writing this comment, please DM me if I’m mistaken about that:
I do have a humble request to make of you though… as you continue on, perhaps feeling as though you really don’t have time for this but might as well give it a quick skim anyhow to see what Milan has been up to, if as you do this you notice a desire to respond to something I say, please don’t until you actually have space to read this post and all the other posts I linked to above carefully (with care, with space). If you don’t foresee being able to do this in the immediate future, that’s fine… I just ask that you don’t respond to this post in any way until you do.
If you downvote (or upvote!) this post without first having read it (and the other posts I linked to) with care and attention, you are explicitly deciding to not honor my request:
I do have a humble request to make of you though… as you continue on, perhaps feeling as though you really don’t have time for this but might as well give it a quick skim anyhow to see what Milan has been up to, if as you do this you notice a desire to respond to something I say, please don’t until you actually have space to read this post and all the other posts I linked to above carefully (with care, with space). If you don’t foresee being able to do this in the immediate future, that’s fine… I just ask that you don’t respond to this post in any way until you do.
And that’s fine, but please know that that is what you are doing.
Some preliminaries and a claim
Any update on this?
(It has now been 2 years since my original post.)
No intentionality though, just a blind process over millennia.
With intentionality, you can go from birds to 747s and F-16s in 70 years.
Yes, I disagree.
There are currently several legal, high-quality psychedelic modalities on offer that I would be personally excited to work with (1, 2, 3, 4). Many more will be coming online within the next 5 years.
I haven’t heard of any genetic engineering interventions on the market that are currently having a transformative impact, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable personally participating in genetic engineering until it was way more battle-tested.
Humans have been using psychedelic healing modalities to good effect for thousands of years – that track record plus what we know from the research about their risk/reward profile makes me feel comfortable working with them (in a respectful way).Genetic engineering doesn’t seem to have a comparable track record or a comparable evidence base.
Thanks… I replied on that thread.
This is my goal. This is what I want. This is my intention. (I tried to state it clearly in the post.)
Wouldn’t it be interesting if this goal were significantly different from how goals are usually used?