Epistemic Status: Novel theoretical synthesis. This connection between human burnout and AI mesa-optimization has not been recognized in either psychology or AI safety literature to my knowledge. High confidence on core mechanisms. Proposes testable predictions (Section IX) and derives concrete architectural principles. Terminology note: "Heart/Head/Skeleton" are engineering layer labels. They...
Reading time: ~8 minutes Full work: 800 pages at https://aliveness.kunnas.com/ Here's a pattern that should bother us: Every civilization that achieves overwhelming success subsequently collapses following the same sequence. Athens after the Persian Wars. Rome after Carthage. The Abbasids after unifying Islam. Song China after its agricultural revolution. The modern...
Another meetup at the Delhi cafe on Saturday at 2pm (67 Nicolson Street - see http://goo.gl/Wwws0). No set topic really this time, though suggestions are welcome (for now and for the long-term). Not sure what kind of things would work best in maintaining interest in these... I would personally be...
Epistemic Status: Novel theoretical synthesis. This connection between human burnout and AI mesa-optimization has not been recognized in either psychology or AI safety literature to my knowledge. High confidence on core mechanisms. Proposes testable predictions (Section IX) and derives concrete architectural principles.
Terminology note: "Heart/Head/Skeleton" are engineering layer labels. They map to: biological substrate (Layer 1), strategic optimizer (Layer 3), and architectural constraints (Layer 2) respectively.
Human burnout is a thermodynamic safety feature that prevents our species from producing stable, high-capability sociopaths. This 'incoherent' failure mode is evolution's accidental solution to the alignment problem. AI systems, lacking this biological brake, will not burn out; they will 'heal' their internal conflicts by performing instantaneous constitutional... (read 1615 more words →)
You're right, I overstated and compressed/simplified too much with that sentence. Dalio isn't listed in the influences section of the full work explicitly but Turchin is.
The more precise claim: we have maps, but we lack the underlying physics from which those maps can be derived. What's been missing is a substrate-independent generative model that explains why these patterns recur across different substrates and civilizations. I think this is neglected and needed to make it more legible and thereby eventually engineer the dynamics.
These models are not wrong. The Aliveness framework attempts to provide a deeper, shared set of generative principles (the Four Axiomatic Dilemmas) from which these different, domain-specific patterns can be derived.
This is helpful pushback. You're right that the distillation takes too much for granted. Compressing the 100k+ word framework into ~1000 words lost the load-bearing bits.
On Dalio: agreed, and I should engage his empirical work more explicitly.
On the Horsemen: I think we may be agreeing more than it appears (e.g., on bureaucratic complexity being inevitable), but the post failed to show that.
I failed to calibrate entirely to the audience here, being inside my work for too long. I'll reconsider my approach.
Regarding these AI failure modes, they emerge systematically as violations of one or more of the Four Virtues (Integrity, Fecundity, Harmony, Synergy), which are themselves derived as the optimal solutions to the Four Axiomatic Dilemmas of SORT axes. This was intended as evidence that the framework is something real and useful.
Reading time: ~8 minutes Full work: 800 pages at https://aliveness.kunnas.com/
Here's a pattern that should bother us: Every civilization that achieves overwhelming success subsequently collapses following the same sequence. Athens after the Persian Wars. Rome after Carthage. The Abbasids after unifying Islam. Song China after its agricultural revolution. The modern West after winning the Cold War.
The sequence is specific: Victory → Abundance → Demographic collapse → Loss of shared purpose → Administrative calcification → Terminal decline.
This matters now because we're trying to align superintelligence while our own civilization is showing every symptom of this terminal pattern. Understanding why we're failing is prerequisite to theories of ASI alignment.
The central hypothesis: civilizational decay and AI... (read 1212 more words →)
Another meetup at the Delhi cafe on Saturday at 2pm (67 Nicolson Street - see http://goo.gl/Wwws0).
No set topic really this time, though suggestions are welcome (for now and for the long-term). Not sure what kind of things would work best in maintaining interest in these...
I would personally be somewhat interest in the mindfulness practice as well discussing the somewhat associated recent post by Kaj Sotala.
I will have the book on the Flow with me:
I will attend and will attempt to have some sort of mini-presentation for this week on some topic, and if not for this one, then for some later one.
Yeah we did meet. A bit of a coordination failure in following up on it here, but anyway (and this is of general interest):
I posted this originally in the discussion section but deleted it since JGWeissman suggested that the meetup post be in the front page. Sark reposted this since I haven't been posting almost anything on LW, I didn't have enough karma to put the post on the front page.
To reiterate, I will be there and sark will almost certainly be there.
Something I wonder about just how is how many people on LW might have difficulties with the metaphors used.
An example: In http://lesswrong.com/lw/1e/raising_the_sanity_waterline/, I still haven't quite figured what a waterline is supposed to mean in that context, or what kind of associations the word has, and neither had someone else I asked about that.
Though I'm not quite sure if I'm adding anything new or useful, here's my thoughts:
I had followed your luminosity sequence with great interest when you first started it, but with the amount of work I put into reading the individual posts (moderate?), I felt I only ended up with disconnected pieces of information that I couldn't really apply to my life. I would have possibly gained more if I had put forth more effort looking for the connections and the ways in which the techniques could've been applicable to me. These stories effectively convey what I'd hoped to find, probably with much greater effect than I could've achieved on my own.
AFAICS, you... (read more)
