All of mark's Comments + Replies

mark40

I've been using this method a lot and I realized there's a shortcut if you have an exceptionally powerful disconfirmation memory. The moment you realize a distressing feeling has arisen,  activate the powerful memory and hold it until reconsolidation is complete. You don't need to identify the target schema or identify a relevant disconfirming experience. The identity of the schema is usually revealed during reconsolidation, which feels easier than identifying it before reconsolidation. For me the memory was taking MDMA (alone, therapeutic context) fo... (read more)

mark74

Plant suffering depends on completely unverified theories of subjective experience (See https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness). Suffering is possibly unmeasurable. We only know that we can suffer and we assume others can suffer because they seem similar enough to us. Plants are different enough than animals with central nervous systems that assuming they can suffer seems a shaky proposition. One could write a microcontroller program that makes some signal if it's circuit is damaged. Does that mean that program can suffer?

1tangerine
People are not fundamentally different from such a microcontroller. It’s signals all the way down. One can try to do suffering calculus like in the original post, based on certain axioms, but these are unfalsifiable. Realistically, suffering calculus is based on a political and sociological consensus, e.g., the Overton window. Humans have political representation and Western civilization has human equality as a kind of axiom, at least nominally, so in the Western world there is a lot of incentive to reduce all human suffering (unlike in China, for example, where Uyghurs are marginalized). Animals have far less representation, so there is less incentive to reduce suffering. In my country, there is a Party for Animals with a few seats in Parliament, voted in by people (because axiomatically animals don’t have the right to vote) who do it to perhaps virtue signal, or because the human brain is wired to empathize more with similar beings, or for unfalsifiable philosophical considerations, or for some other reason which for other voting blocs is not in their Overton window. For plants the situation is far more dire. It is in principle possible that for large swaths of the public the Overton window shifts such that they will refuse to support the “slaughter” of plants. But what’s in the Overton window is separate from the facts and there are no facts of the matter about suffering.
2Charlie Steiner
If you think that there's a bright line somewhere - some fact of the matter about where to really draw a category boundary around suffering, which requires a "theory of subjective experience" without which we can't usefully answer whether plants suffer - then I'm sort of disinterested in talking to you about plant suffering. Unless you want to change tacks and talk about the object level of plant cognition and plant stress responses? They're cool.
mark50

I did an experiment and prompted ChatGPT4 to guide me in the Coherence Therapy model. I did an hour long session, treating the session as seriously as if I was with a valued human therapist. In this narrow context, I felt empathized with, understood, and effectively guided through healing a bit of my pain. I've already done a lot of healing (largely mdma+psilocybin sessions), have a good idea of the types of emotional wounds I have, and have a pretty good understanding of how healing works. I think this experience was valuable in guiding GPT4 to do what I ... (read more)

mark100

I'm glad to see others are talking about this! I've had an exceptionally effective experience healing severe early childhood emotional neglect through around 10 MDMA/psilocybin combo trips over the past 2 years. I started with a trusted guide and then transitioned to solo once I got the hang of things. It saved my life and made me much more compassionate, rational, and effective. I'm also less attached to my identities. I feel whole and alive for the first time in my life.

I also used to view my value as largely instrumental. My mental health was bad enough... (read more)

mark10

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I'm particularly interested in the positive effects of healing unprocessed trauma (via MDMA therapy[3],  psychotherapy, etc). It increases cognitive flexibility, increases compassion, and reduces the rigidness of identities. I think some effects of extreme unprocessed trauma like narcissism, manipulativeness, dehumanization of others, violent crime[1], fascism, etc. have catastrophically large negative effects on society and treating the trauma at the core[2] of these problems should be among the highest of priorities.

[1] ht... (read more)

2Kaj_Sotala
Welcome! You might be interested in my Multi-Agent Models of Mind sequence; people have particularly liked this post, which is about how therapy seems to work; posts such as Building up to an Internal Family Systems model and Subagents, trauma, and rationality may also be of interest.