Now that is quite some text to read. Thank you very much. My request was aimed at more general books though this is still useful.
You seem very knowledgeable on this specific topic. Am I right in assuming you are knowledgeable about emotional issues more generally? Would you be willing to write a post about these topics?
It's only been about 6 months since I started consciously focusing my attention on the subtle effects of abandonment trauma. Although I've done a fair amount of reading and reflecting on the topic I'm not at the point yet where I can confidently give guidance to others. Maybe in the next 3-4 months I'll write up a post for the discussion section here on LW.
What's frustrating is that signs of compulsive, codependent and narcissistic behavior are everywhere, with clear connections to methods of coping developed in childhood, but the number of people who pay attention to these connections is still small enough that discussion is sparse and the sort of research findings you'd like to look up remain unavailable. The most convincing research result I've been able to find is this paper on parental verbal abuse and white matter, where it was found that parental verbal abuse significantly reduces fractional anisotropy in the brain's white matter.
If people on LW put half the effort in emotional issues they put in rational topics we'd be a whole lot further. Thank you for this quote very much.
Any insight explosion books I should read?
Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving by Pete Walker focuses on the understanding that wounds from active abuse make up the outer layers of a psychological structure, the core of which is an experience of abandonment caused by passive neglect. He writes about self-image, food issues, codependency, fear of intimacy and generally about the long but freeing process of recovering.
As with physical abuse, effective work on the wounds of verbal and emotional abuse can sometimes open the door to de-minimizing the awful impact of emotional neglect. I sometimes feel the most for my clients who were “only” neglected, because without the hard core evidence – the remembering and de-minimizing of the impact of abuse – they find it extremely difficult to connect their non-existent self-esteem, their frequent flashbacks, and their recurring reenactments of impoverished relationships, to their childhood emotional abandonment. I repeatedly regret that I did not know what I know now about this kind of neglect when I wrote my book and over-focused on the role of abuse in childhood trauma.
The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller focuses more on the excuses and cultural ideology behind poor parenting. She grew up in an abusive household in 1920s-'30s Germany.
Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings. And the fountainhead of all contempt, all discrimination, is the more or less conscious, uncontrolled, and secret exercise of power over the child by the adult, which is tolerated by society (except in the case of murder or serious bodily harm). What adults do to their child's spirit is entirely their own affair. For a child is regarded as the parents' property, in the same way that the citizens of a totalitarian state are the property of its government. Until we become sensitized to the child's suffering, this wielding of power by adults will continue to be a normal aspect of the human condition, for no one takes seriously what is regarded as trivial, since the victims are "only children." But in twenty years' time these children will be adults who will pay it all back to their own children. They may then fight vigorously against cruelty "in the world" -- and yet they will carry within themselves an experience of cruelty to which they have no access and which remains hidden behind their idealized picture of a happy childhood.
Healing The Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw is about toxic shame and the variety of ways it takes root in our minds. Feedback loops between addictive behavior and self-hatred, subtle indoctrination about sexuality being "dirty", religious messages about sin, and even being compelled to eat when you're not hungry:
Generally speaking, most of our vital spontaneous instinctual life gets shamed. Children are shamed for being too rambunctious, for wanting things and for laughing too loud. Much dysfunctional shame occurs at the dinner table. Children are forced to eat when they are not hungry. Sometimes children are forced to eat what they do not find appetizing. Being exiled at the dinner table until the plate is cleaned is not unusual in modern family life. The public humiliation of sitting at the dinner table all alone, often with siblings jeering, is a painful kind of exposure.
I'm starting to maybe figure out why I've had such difficulties with both relaxing and working in the recent years.
It feels that, large parts of the time, my mind is constantly looking for an escape, though I'm not entirely sure what exactly it is trying to escape from. But it wants to get away from the current situation, whatever the current situation happens to be. To become so engrossed in something that it forgets about everything else.
Unfortunately, this often leads to the opposite result. My mind wants that engrossment right now, and if it can't get it, it will flinch away from whatever I'm doing and into whatever provides an immediate reward. Facebook, forums, IRC, whatever gives that quick dopamine burst. That means that I have difficulty getting into books, TV shows, computer games: if they don't grab me right away, I'll start growing restless and be unable to focus on them. Even more so with studies or work, which usually require an even longer "warm-up" period before one gets into flow.
Worse, I'm often sufficiently aware of that discomfort that my awareness of it prevents the engrossment. I go loopy: I get uncomfortable about the fact that I'm uncomfortable, and then if I have to work or study, my focus is on "how do I get rid of this feeling" rather than on "what should I do next in this project". And then my mind keeps flinching away from the project, to anything that would provide a distraction, on to Facebook, to IRC, to whatever. And I start feeling worse and worse.
Some time back, I started experimenting with teaching myself not to have any goals. That is, instead of having a bunch of stuff I try to accomplish in some given time period, simply be okay with doing absolutely nothing for all day (or all week, or all year...), until a natural motivation to do something develops. This seems to help. So does mindfulness, as well as ensuring that my basic needs have been met: enough sleep and food and having some nice real-life social interaction every few days.
Anybody else recognize this?
I recognize this in myself and it's been difficult to understand, much less get under control. The single biggest insight I've had about this flinching-away behavior (at least the way it arises in my own mind) is that it's most often a dissociative coping mechanism. Something intuitively clicked into place when I read Pete Walker's description of the "freeze type". From The 4Fs: A Trauma Typology in Complex PTSD:
Many freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the "off" position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - "the lost child" - who is forced to "choose" and habituate to the freeze response (the most primitive of the 4Fs). Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type's defenses develop around classical dissociation, which allows him to disconnect from experiencing his abandonment pain, and protects him from risky social interactions - any of which might trigger feelings of being reabandoned. Freeze types often present as ADD; they seek refuge and comfort in prolonged bouts of sleep, daydreaming, wishing and right brain-dominant activities like TV, computer and video games. They master the art of changing the internal channel whenever inner experience becomes uncomfortable. When they are especially traumatized or triggered, they may exhibit a schizoid-like detachment from ordinary reality.
Of course like with any other psychological condition there's a wide spectrum: some people had wonderful childhoods full of safe attachment and always had somebody to model healthy processing of emotions for them, some people were utterly abandoned as children, and many more had something between those extremes. The key understanding I've gained from Pete Walker's writing is that simply being left alone with upsetting inner experience too often as a child can lead to development of "freeze type" defenses, even in the absence of any overtly abusive treatment.
I suspect that using a combination of TV shows, games and web browsing as emotional analgesics (at various levels of awareness) is very common now in wealthy countries. This is one of the reasons I would like to see more discussion of emotional issues on Less Wrong.
The Less Wrong Q&A is the most horribly designed... thing I've ever seen.
I don't understand why these are videos. They don't offer diagrams or anything useful to see. As a visual it's just an utterly boring face speaking to us. Eliezer's voice isn't particularly charismatic. So why can't he just type his responses, which would be both easier for him to edit, and for us to browse though?
Even if the video format served some purpose, the fact it's broken up in multiple videos, means that I can't even have the voice sound in the background while I'm eating or browsing articles or doing something else -- since it stops every couple minutes, and I then have to go back to click the next one (actually process is "go back to the page of the videos, click the link indicating the question, read the question, go back to the page of videos, click next video to start") Repeat the above 30 times. It's broken up in 30 videos. Thirty! What the hell.
Worse yet, the questions aren't even above the videos. They are just linked to. And the links don't even go to a page where all the questions are grouped together, they go to different pages for each question. Which means that if you're looking to find the video that answers a particular question, you need click 30 links, then check the video that interests you, then go through all links again to find the next interesting video.
In short: screw that. I got bored after the third video or so, and quit the whole deal. What process of rationality determined all the above design choices? I'm asking that seriously. Whoever designed the thing, please justify these damned choices to us.
I plan on transcribing all those video answers soon (within the next few days).
Insanity will prevail when sane men do nothing? (Apologies to Edmund Burke)
I think this adaptation is much more precise than the original.
Apathy on the individual level translates into insanity at the mass level.
-- Douglas Hofstadter
I have been thinking about a Seattle meet up for a while, as I think I have seen a few others here from the area. I recall seeing another poster say that they were from the University of Washington. (I'm an undergrad there)
I had a few questions: First off, I don't have enough karma to create a top-level post. Is the discussion board appropriate or can we figure out something for a top-level?
I might recall an old thread on "how to run a Lesswrong meetup" but I can't find it---did this exist?
What have been your favorite low-preparation activities and discussions?
Edit: Ok, I'm going to check up on booking a classroom at the UW, unless somebody has an appropriate restaurant they would recommend. Once I get everything figured out I'll make a post, but I'm thinking Saturday or Sunday afternoon before Valentine's day.
I recall seeing another poster say that they were from the University of Washington.
Maybe that was me? Even better if it wasn't!
I would definitely be interested in a meetup. As for a low-preparation (but still likely to be useful) discussion topic: day-to-day productivity / fighting akrasia.
I don't think any language or culture currently has a turn of phrase which is actually adequate for events like this - for expressing exactly what was lost.
I've also lost a grandparent, and an uncle. Wasn't extremely close to either of them, but I understand that sickening feeling which goes along with knowing that someone played a role in your development as a person, and that you'll never be able to talk to them again. And I can't be the only person among those who occasionally hang out in the #lesswrong IRC channel to have such an experience. Pop in and talk to us if you feel the need.
And if you feel like it, maybe (re-)read Chapter 45 of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
And Death is not something I will ever embrace. It is only a childish thing, that the human species has not yet outgrown. And someday... We'll get over it... And people won't have to say goodbye any more...
We can sort of see what might cause someone to change their views on what their generic priors should look like by looking at semi-historical examples.
Early on in the theory of computable functions it seemed like all computable functions might be primitive recursive. Presumably, if one didn't know about things llike the Ackermann function, you'd have no issue phrasing a general prior in terms of primitive recursive functions.
Another example is actually in your text, where people realized that quantum systems seemed to be able to do things that non-quantum systems could not (within certain time bounds).
Thus. updating our general framework seems to occur when aspects of the universe around us suggest that modeling them requires a larger class of functions than we anticipated. In the case of primitive recursive functions, it turned out that empirically the human brain could calculate a specific function that wasn't primitive recursive.
For what it is worth, I don't share your confidence that priors won't need to be drastically re-examined. One issue that Eliezer and others have observed with the Solomonoff prior is that it assigns equal probability to different ideas regardless of the computational time. While privileging polynomial time descriptions might help, it isn't clear how one should distinguish between two Turing machines, one which runs in very short time (say degree 2) and another that is long (say degree 20) but the degree 2 has a much smaller number of states. Which one of those is simpler?
On the problem of distinguishing between Turing machines of the kinds you mentioned, does Jürgen Schmidhuber's idea of a speed prior help at all? Searching for "speed prior" here on Less Wrong didn't really turn up any previous discussion.
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Sure. I am not an MD, but this is my view as an outsider: the medical profession is quite conservative, and people that publish medical papers have an incentive to publish "fast and loose," and not necessarily be very careful (because hey you can just write another paper later if a better method comes along!)
Because medicine deals with people, you often can't do random treatment assignment in your studies (for ethical reasons), so you often have evidence in the form of observational data, where you have a ton of confounding of various types. Causal inference can help people make use of observational data properly. This is important -- most data we have is observational. And if you are not careful, you are going to get garbage from it. For example, there was a fairly recent paper by Robins et al. that basically showed that their way of adjusting for confounding in observational data was correct because they reproduced a result found in an RCT.
There is room both for people to go to graduate school and work on new methods for properly dealing with observational data for drawing causal conclusions, and for popularizers.
Popularizing this stuff is a lot of what Pearl does, and is also partly the purpose of Hernan's and Robin's new book:
https://www.facebook.com/causalinference
Full disclosure: obviously this is my area, so I am going to say that. So don't take my word for it :).
Here on Less Wrong there are a significant number of mathematically inclined software engineers who know some probability theory, meaning they've read/worked through at least one of Jaynes and Pearl but may not have gone to graduate school. How could someone with this background contribute to making causal inference more accessible to researchers? Any tools that are particularly under-developed or missing?