HI, I'm GDC3. Those are my initials. I'm a little nervous about giving my full name on the internet, especially because my dad is googlible and I'm named after him. (Actually we're both named after my grandfather, hence the 3) But I go by G.D. in real life anyway so its not exactly not my name. I'm primarily working on learning math in advance of returning to college right now.
Sorry if this is TMI but you asked: I became an aspiring rationalist because I was molested as a kid and I knew that something was wrong, but not what it was or how to stop it, and I figure that if I didn't learn how the world really worked instead of what people told me, stuff like that might keep happening to me. So I guess my something to protect was me.
My something to protect is still mostly me, because most of my life is still dealing with the consequences of that. My limbic system learned all sorts of distorted and crazy things about how the world works that my neocortex has to spend all of its time trying to compensate for. Trying to be a functional human being is sort of hard enough goal for now. I also value and care about eventually using this information to help other people who've had similar stuff happen to them. I value this primarily because I've pre-committed to valuing that so that the narrative would motivate me emotionally when I hate myself too much to motivate myself selfishly.
So I guess I self-modified my utility function. I actually was pretty willing to hurt other people to protect myself as a kid. I've made myself more altruistic not to feel less guilty (which would mean that I wasn't really as selfish as I thought I was), but to feel less alone. Which is plausible I guess, because I wasn't exactly a standard moral specimen as a kid.
I hope that was more interesting than upsetting. I think I can learn a lot from you guys if I can speak freely. I hope that I can contribute or at least constitute good outreach.
I value this primarily because I've pre-committed to valuing that so that the narrative would motivate me emotionally when I hate myself too much to motivate myself selfishly.
I think that's the most succinct formulation of this pattern I've ever run into. Nicely thought, and nicely expressed.
(I found the rest of your comment interesting as well, but that really jumped out at me.)
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