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Unrolling social metacognition: Three levels of meta are not enough.

Disclaimer: This post was written time-boxed to 2 hours because I think LessWrong can still understand and improve upon it; please don't judge me harshly for it. Summary: I am generally dismayed that many people seem to think or assume that only three levels of social metacognition matter ("Alex knows that Bailey knows that Charlie knows X"), or otherwise seem generally averse to unrolling those levels. This post is intended to point out (1) how the higher levels systematically get distilled and chunked into smaller working memory elements through social learning, which leads to emotional tracking of phenomena at 6 levels of meta and higher, and (2) what I think this means about how to approach conflict resolution. Epistemic status: don't take my word for it; conceptual points intended to be fairly self evident upon reflection; actual techniques not backed up by systematic empirical research and might not generalize to other humans; all content very much validated by my personal experiences with talking to people about feelings in real life. Related Reading: Duncan Sabien on Common knowledge & Miasma; Ben Pace on The Costly Coordination Mechanism of Common Knowledge I. Conceptual introduction, by example Here's how higher levels of social metacognition get distilled down and represented in emotions that end up tracking them (if poorly). Each feeling in the example below will be followed by an unrolling of the actual event or events it is implicitly tracking or referring to. Warning: reading this first section (I) will require a fair bit of symbolic reasoning/thinking, so you might find it tiring and prefer to skip to later sections. A better writing of this section would do more work in between these symbolic reasoning bits to distill things out and make them easier to digest. Scale 1: One event, four levels of meta (yes, we're starting with four) 1.1) Alex leaves out the milk for 5 minutes 1.2) Bailey observes (1.1

193Aug 25, 2018

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Coordination Surveys: why we should survey to organize responsibilities, not just predictions

Summary: I think it’s important for surveys about the future of technology or society to check how people's predictions of the future depend on their beliefs about what actions or responsibilities they and others will take on. Moreover, surveys should also help people to calibrate their beliefs about those responsibilities...

May 7, 201968

Unrolling social metacognition: Three levels of meta are not enough.

Aug 25, 2018193

Survey: What's the most negative*plausible cryonics-works story that you know?

Warning: people will be trying to be pessimistic here. Don't read this if you don't want to be reminded of scary outcomes. Request: if you get an idea that you think might be too scary to post publicly even under the above warning, but you are willing to send it...

Dec 23, 20159

Deliberate Grad School

Among my friends interested in rationality, effective altruism, and existential risk reduction, I often hear: "If you want to have a real positive impact on the world, grad school is a waste of time. It's better to use deliberate practice to learn whatever you need instead of working within the...

Oct 4, 201538

Willpower Depletion vs Willpower Distraction

I once asked a room full of about 100 neuroscientists whether willpower depletion was a thing, and there was widespread disagreement with the idea. (A propos, this is a great way to quickly gauge consensus in a field.) Basically, for a while some researchers believed that willpower depletion "is" glucose...

Jun 15, 2014111

CFAR is looking for a videographer for next Wednesday

Hi all, CFAR is looking for a videographer in the Bay Area to shoot and edit a 1-minute video introducing us. Do you know anyone? If so, please send an email to them and me (critch@rationality.org) that introduces us! We'll need to shoot the video on Wednesday, Oct 16, or...

Oct 8, 20139

Are coin flips quantum random to my conscious brain-parts?

Hello rationality friends! I have a question that I bet some of you have thought about... I hear lots of people saying that classical coin flips are not "quantum random events", because the outcome is very nearly determined by thumb movement when I flip the coin. More precisely, one can...

Feb 19, 201311

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Unrolling social metacognition: Three levels of meta are not enough.

Too busy to think about life

Yes, a blog.

Break your habits: be more empirical

Academian

Coordination Surveys: why we should survey to organize responsibilities, not just predictions

Unrolling social metacognition: Three levels of meta are not enough.

Survey: What's the most negative*plausible cryonics-works story that you know?

Deliberate Grad School

Willpower Depletion vs Willpower Distraction

CFAR is looking for a videographer for next Wednesday

Are coin flips quantum random to my conscious brain-parts?

Unrolling social metacognition: Three levels of meta are not enough.

Too busy to think about life

Yes, a blog.

Break your habits: be more empirical

Coordination Surveys: why we should survey to organize responsibilities, not just predictions

Unrolling social metacognition: Three levels of meta are not enough.

Survey: What's the most negative*plausible cryonics-works story that you know?

Deliberate Grad School

Willpower Depletion vs Willpower Distraction

CFAR is looking for a videographer for next Wednesday

Are coin flips quantum random to my conscious brain-parts?